Frequently Asked Questions
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- General Questions
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Yes, all sales are aggregated into these statements. Please note that we have checked international sales each quarter and the sales are low for any author who’s not specifically opted in to POD printing in a foreign country, as is the case with some or our Aussie and Kiwi authors. Simon & Schuster has a thriving international team, so we expect this to be an area of growth for us in the future. We’ll keep you posted.
Whether you were an author when we had distribution via PGW, or a front list author as we moved to Simon & Schuster, the answer is no, unfortunately . There’s not a good system in place for this at this time, but we’re working to see if there is a future way for authors to pull this information directly.
Your e-book price (on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, etc.) can be changed by your project manager to any price, including zero, for promotions, BookBub deals, etc. Please inform them at least two weeks ahead of time, as it often takes a few days for prices to change, as well as to go back to normal. Please keep in mind that we cannot control the exact time of a price change, so it may change a few days before the date of your sale or promotion.
Yes, any bookstore interested in carrying your book can order directly through Simon & Schuster. We will fulfill bookstore orders whether you’ve opted to make your book available through a print run or through POD.
How much you make from a $16.95 book will depend on where and how it is sold.
FOR BOOKS SOLD DIRECTLY FROM YOUR WEBSITE OR AT LIVE EVENTS:
- The Net Sales Price will be the $16.95, or a little less if you discount it.
- The manufacturing cost will be $2 – $4 (depending on POD vs. print-run).
- If you hand-sell the books from among your own initial inventory, or ship them yourself, those are your only costs. If you need to replenish your own stock from IPS’s warehouse, you need to take those costs into consideration.
- So, if you sell your book directly, your Net Profit will be: $12.95 – 14.95.
We recommend you pass along the cost of shipping and handling to your consumer. Sending via media mail throughout the U.S. is $2.58 and the cost of mailers is typically about $1-$1.50 per mailer, so you can generally charge back between $4-$5 for shipping and handling.
FOR PHYSICAL BOOKS SOLD DIRECTLY THROUGH AMAZON, B&N, OR OTHER RETAILERS (THE BOOK TRADE):
- The Net Sales Price will be $8.47 or 50% of the $16.95 (standard trade discount).
- The manufacturing cost will be about $2 – $4.
- For distribution, maintaining the trade relationships, warehousing, shipping, and accounting for book sales, SWP/SP receives a 40% fee from the Net Sales Price.
- So, for books sold through the trade, your Net Profit will be: $1.09-$3.09 ($8.47 minus $2-$4 [manufacturing] minus $3.38 [40% of $8.47]).
- Because author earnings vary greatly depending on the cost of printing, SWP/SP increasingly recommends print runs that will yield a lower price point per book and we will work with the author to obtain the best price point per unit.
FOR E-BOOK SALES:
- E-books are currently sold at the price set by SWP/SP with author approval.
- For managing relationships and files, distribution to the trade partners, and for handling all customer service and accounting, SWP/SP receives a 20% fee from the Net Sales Price.
- There are two ways in which e-book earnings are calculated, depending on where the e-books are sold. The pricing for these two models is broken out here. Note Ingram’s fees and commissions, which are 5.6% of retail cost for the agency model and 7.5% of net for the wholesale model.
E-BOOK Agency Model (e.g., Apple) She Writes Press Traditional Publisher List Price $9.99 $9.99 Retailer $3.00 $3.00 Fees/commissions $0.56 $0.76 Publisher $1.40 $4.74 Author $5.03 $1.49 E-BOOK Wholesale Model (e.g., Amazon) She Writes Press Traditional Publisher List Price $9.99 $9.99 Retailer $5.24 $3.00 Fees/commissions $0.36 $0.76 Publisher $0.95 $4.74 Author $3.44 $1.49
Yes, ARCs are a standard part of our process and built into our production process. Having ARCs goes hand in hand with having a publicity plan. Some books will not need ARCs, but most books do. If you’re working with a publicist, we will encourage you to get ARCs made. We print these through our printing partner, Lightning Source, and the cost ranges from about $3 to $5 per ARC.
Our authors who get a print run will own their own book outright. You may order your books at any point directly from She Writes Press (orders@shewritespress.com) and SparkPress (orders@sparkpointstudio.com) and pay only the shipping cost for those copies. For authors who opt for POD, you may purchase your books for your own use or resale (excluding trade sales) at the manufacturing cost, plus shipping and handling.
Every year, as we begin to win awards, the question comes up if these awards are legitimate and do they really mean anything. The short answer is, yes, this is incredible recognition for both our authors and our press. Although She Writes Press and SparkPress sweep many awards programs, no, these awards are not a given or easy to win. These awards programs get thousands of submissions and our books are consistently catching the eye of the judges. Often, a single judge only reviews a handful of titles, so they have no idea that our authors are consistently winning in other categories, too.
There is much debate about the merit of book awards. However, they can be a very useful sales tool. The life of a book is surprisingly short. After three months, your book is backlisted. Winning an award and promoting that award can breathe fresh air into your sales. Author Kate Raphael did a great post on Medium about this very topic.
Yes, we file copyright for all of our titles, as well as register for a Library of Control Congress number. Since we have to send in the most final version of a book for copyright registration (and the fact that the copyright office has a 8 to 9 month lead time), authors often don’t receive their copyright certificate for close to a year after they publish.
We offer e-book only publishing through our imprint SheBooks at www.shebooks.net.
We no longer publish children’s book on She Writes Press or SparkPress. However, feel free to check out our Children’s Book Publishing + Illustrator Tip Sheet.
Simon & Schuster distributes SWP and SP books through their international distribution outlets in England and Australia, unless we specify otherwise. Please let us know at the point of negotiation if you do not want your book released for international sales. Amazon sells across the world, and SWP and SP will make available the US edition for international purchase. While books are made available in these markets, we do not have an active sales team in any territory beyond the United States and Canada. This does not give us the right to sell translation rights, which are rights our authors retain.
We do not submit books for awards on the behalf of authors.
Yes. We pay authors their earnings biannually, within ninety days of the close of Quarter 2 (June 30) and Quarter 4 (December 31).
Yes. We will convert your files and make them available to the following online retailers: Amazon Kindle Apple® Baker & Taylor Barnes & Noble Nook Kobo Goodreads Page Foundry Rethink Books/Bookshout! Sony Chegg VitalSource Gardners (United Kingdom) Blinkbox Books—formerly GoSpoken/Mobcast (United Kingdom) Sainsbury’s—formerly Anobii (United Kingdom) Txtr (Germany)
Our authors have had great luck tweeting to groups, using hashtags related to themes in their books, and setting up automatic feeds from Facebook. We recommend checking out The Tao of Twitter to get started. A sweet and easy book.
Check their website first for contact information. If there’s a contact form, you can try to contact them that way. Next, reach out via social media, or through their agent or publisher (their contact info will sometimes be listed on the website). Don’t be afraid to share with them what you loved about their book when you make the ask, and remember that if you’re shooting for “pie in the sky” authors you may be disappointed. Many authors get asked ALL THE TIME, so make two lists—one for your reaches and one for those authors who are more reasonable so that you don’t reach your pub date without any blurbs lined up.
SparkPoint Studio no longer enters authors into awards. If you enter a contest on your own, you can discuss creating graphics with your publicist. If you win an award or finalist title, you can also request the award/medal graphics from the contest for us to add to your digital book cover or, if you have an upcoming print run, to send to the warehouse for stickering for a fee.
Your Amazon categories are chosen by Amazon based on what other potential buyers look at before and after viewing your book, and are slightly influenced by the keywords you choose for your book that are in our data system. Your project manager can alter your keywords, but authors have also had luck calling Amazon and asking to change the keywords directly.
This feature is another of Amazon’s algorithms, and it’s all about the shopping cart. You can encourage your readers to buy a book you want to be associated along with yours, and that can get you linked up with a heavier-hitting author. There are workarounds to a lot of Amazon’s formulas. Use them to your advantage.
You order your books directly from She Writes Press at orders@shewritespress.com.
You can order your books directly from SparkPress at orders@sparkpointstudio.com.
Interest has been building in special price promotions offered by BookBub and its competitors. We are happy to help you with us, but we have a word of caution. It’s easy for your project manager to ask Ingram to make a price change across platforms. It’s more difficult to make sure that the price change takes effect across all of the platforms. Indeed, sometimes the change Ingram has requested does not get reflected on all platforms in a timely manner. That being said, long lead times will help us help you prepare for special price promotions.
Additionally, it’s important to know that international retailers often try to convert the US price rather than accepting a provided international price. This, combined with a variety of different tax codes across the world, make international sales particularly difficult. Recently we’ve been experiencing such difficulty with this that we have to inform you that we cannot guarantee that all of the international platforms will be updated. Please take this into consideration when you weigh what you’re paying BookBub. If there is a particular territory that’s important to you due to the content of your book, please let us know in advance so that we can flag it with Ingram leading up to your sales dates.
Here is a list of the top platforms that we ask you to keep an eye on:
- Amazon
- B&N.com
- Kobo
- Apple
- iTunes
Let us know if there are others you want us to add to this list.
What you need to do:
- Notify us 10 business days prior to when you want your promotion to begin. For example, if you have a special price promotion that starts on the morning of September 21, you will need to ask us by the morning of September 7 to change the price. Having received the request 10 business days ahead of time, we will place it on our calendar to request the price change from Ingram a full 4 business days in advance of the start of the promotion.
- Two full business days prior to the start of the promotion, you must check the platforms listed above to make sure you can find your e-book on each platform and to make sure the price change you requested has taken effect.
- Notify us immediately if any of the 10 platforms listed above have not reflected the change. That will give us two days to work with Ingram reps to correct errors before the price promotion begins.
- We cannot guarantee that Ingram or any of the Ingram-related platforms will not make mistakes. But we can do our best for you, and working with long lead times is our best bet in getting price changes made in time for your promotion.
- Please read this post, Seven BookBub Basics if You’re Doing It Yourself, by She Writes Press author Barbara Stark-Nemon: http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/seven-bookbub-basics-if-you-re-doing-it-yourself
Some of our authors have foreign rights agents already. If and when you sell your rights, please be sure to let Brooke know so that we are not keeping channels open in those territories through Simon & Schuster.
Through SparkPoint Studio, She Writes Press and SparkPress authors have access to our reputable literary agent. This agent represents all of our titles (except for those authors who already have a foreign rights agent). If you’re interested in being specifically represented in a particular country because there’s relevance or a tie-in to your book, please let Brooke know.
Once you have a foreign rights agent, the process simply takes a lot of patience. The agent will shop around their catalog of titles. Authors do not have direct access to our foreign rights agent, but we will update you as we receive requests for your titles.
Sharing your book on social media platforms is a great visual way to reach current fans and create new ones. You can copy and paste the URL from your author page or book page (located on your imprint, either www.shewritespress.com, www.gosparkpress.com, or www.shebooks.net). Paste the link into a post on your favorite social media platform, and share! Don’t forget to tag your publisher, use hashtags (#spring2019reads, @shewritespress, @GoSparkPress, #shebooks, #amreading), and consider boosting your posts to reach new audiences.
The option to order a short print run is a unique service that we offer in the world of hybrid publishing. We talk through the choices and help our authors decide whether or not it makes sense to do a short print run. As a general rule of thumb, authors who believe they can sell over 500 books in one year are good candidates for printing, versus POD. Please note that the author fronts the cost of their print runs.
SWP and SP do not offer fulfillment services on direct sales from authors’ websites. The only option for direct fulfillment from us is to place orders of a 10 or more. If you so choose, you can fulfill your own single orders directly from your site, making sure to factor in the cost of shipping and handling (we recommend a flat fee of $5 for your mailer and the media mail option via USPS).
When an author decides to publish with She Writes Press, SparkPress, or SheBooks, their cover is managed and/or designed by our creative director, Julie Metz. Authors are asked to fill out a cover memo to give us direction, and from there they are given at least three cover “comps” to review. These will be conceptual, not completely polished. The author then weighs in on the direction and consults with her project manager about what’s working and not working. In an ideal scenario, one of the three directions will be on track and the designer will polish that cover with feedback from the author. If all three concepts are off-track, we will offer one more additional round. We will work with our authors to create the best possible cover for their book, but we will also request from our authors that this be a collaborative process. We take our covers very seriously and strive to produce covers we can all be proud of.
Our books are distributed by Simon & Schuster as of August 2024, and all books benefit from their internal sales process. They will also be listed in Simon & Schusyer’s online catalog through Edelweiss. We will warehouse books in Tennessee at no additional cost to the author for up to one year. After one year, books may become subject to storage fees. Brooke will notify authors at the one-year mark about how much inventory is in the warehouse, and at that point we discuss options with the authors on an individual basis.
She Writes Press and SparkPress takes a distribution, management, and warehousing fee of 40% of net sales on all print books sold and 30% on all e-books sold. There is also a small fee added on to e-books (7.5% of net sales for all accounts except Apple, and 5.6% of retail for Apple). See the further breakdown of this below. We provide quarterly statements to all of our authors. We also make sure that the accounts are current. We liaison with all major accounts. We believe that authors will benefit from having us managing their POD and e-book accounts because, as any author braving the world of self-publishing alone knows, there are a lot of small details to figure out and stay on top of. One of the most complicated is metadata. In our experience, the big self-publishing companies don’t give authors much hand holding. We strive to function like a traditional press in this sense. Our authors can contact us with problems, and we will keep their accounts running smoothly.
There are many free options available, like Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress. If you use these sites, you will be solely responsible for designing and updating your site whenever you have new information to add. When it comes to paid services, you definitely get what you pay for and should consider the designer’s portfolio before signing a contract with them. Several SWP, SP, and SB authors have used BookSparks to create an author website. There are a number of authors who’ve hired other professionals, too, and you can get those referrals by asking on Facebook. Still others have used friends and family with web design skills. Most SWP authors agree—and we support this—that a website is a necessary marketing tool.
The project managers add books in batches according to the season, and all covers, author headshots, and tip sheets must be in our system with Ingram before this happens. As an example, the April-July authors (spring season) are usually added in October/November, while August-November authors (fall season) are usually added in January/February.
Simply email your project manager, and she will make sure that the changes take effect. It typically takes up to 10 working days for the feed to refresh.
Please send your project manager a list of corrections you want to have made in a next printing of your book. Provide all of the corrections in a single file. Please do not send it piecemeal. We ask that this be provided in the same format as the corrections made to your proofread. Again, there is a sample in the back of the handbook.
While it can depend on your book and your audience, overall Brooke prefers an author profile page, but there’s a difference of opinion, and there was quite a discussion about this. For some memoirists, for example, combining the two may make sense. But for others, it depends on your goals and platform. Brooke’s personal page is all about personal stuff and her son so it makes zero sense to combine that page with her public profile page. Although Jane recommends creating specific lists, Brooke still brands her author photo and banner on FB, something she doesn’t want to extend to her personal page. It’s important to do what makes the most sense for you, your goals, your genre, and your brand. There isn’t a simple one-size-fits all solution here, but we encourage you to create author pages over using your public profiles.
The community has had success with a variety of methods, but some of the most successful outreaches were to direct email addresses (versus using a contact form) and to people they had some type of history or interaction with. When creating your outreach list, consider both people related to your specific book (think genre, setting, common themes) as well as your dream list.
If you placed an order directly through the warehouse for your book, that number will be reflected under Gross Units Sold. As of right now, we do not have a way to separate out these direct orders from gross sales. So please subtract the number of books you might have ordered from your gross units sold to get an accurate print number for this (and every quarter), and our apologies for this inconvenience.
If this is your second quarter, you will likely feel that your royalties compared to last quarter are very low. It’s important to reiterate here how presales work. When a book first goes into the world it goes out in relatively big numbers, in that our major accounts take stock of all of our books and put them in their warehouses or on their shelves. These orders are reflected on your statement as sales, and they are going to be really heavily weighted toward your first quarter post-publication. Those books, however, are not “sold-through.” Which means they’re sitting in warehouses and on shelves waiting to be bought. So as the quarters move along, those books that are already out in the world are the ones being sold. What you see on your statement may therefore seem low, because your customers are now buying books that were presold to our retail accounts six months ago or more. The success in later statements should be measured not by new books sold, but rather in low returns.
No, you do not owe us money, but if you have a negative statement this means we are carrying your loss. We hope that future sales will continue to eat away at that negative balance, but the fact that statements do sometimes dip into the negative (due to the returns) is the reason for the HAR.
It’s always a good idea to submit for unpaid reviews first. If your book isn’t accepted for a non-paid review, you can always go back to the same reviewer and pay for a review at a later date. Paid reviews are still non-biased, honest reviews. If the review is unfavorable, you can opt not to publish and share it.
As your publisher, we pay out royalties owed 90 days after the close of Q2 and Q4, so as a reminder, this is a statement-only period showing your Q3 report. This report will roll over and your next statement for Q4 will be sent out at the end of February. Any monies owed for Q3 and Q4 will then be mailed out by the end of March. For the full schedule of when statements and checks are sent, please refer to the updated Author Handbook attached at the end of this email.
Your tip sheet is assembled from all of the data you provide us in your tip sheet template. Each piece of metadata, however, lives on its own in our Simon & Schuster database and can be updated at any time. If you see a correction that needs to be made to your data (which you’ll typically notice once your Amazon page goes live), or if you want to make an addition (to a publicity update or because you got a new blurb), email your project manager (Cait, Lauren, or Samantha) and let them know that you have a metadata change. Please be aware that it takes ten business days for a change to be made in the system, so be patient. And please don’t try to circumvent by making the change directly in your Author Central profile, as that can result in broken and/or duplicated data.
There are many different crowdfunding sites including KickStarter, Go Fund Me and InideGoGo. You’ll want to closely review each site’s models and terms before committing to one. One thing to note is whether their model is “all or nothing.” On KickStarter, for example, you set a funding goal. If that goal isn’t reached, you don’t receive any of the pledges people have made. So if your goal is $1,000 and you only raise $999 at the end of the campaign, you receive nothing. But, if people continue to pledge over your original goal, you do receive all of the money pledged. Some sites allow you to keep whatever pledges you have earned, even if your overall goal isn’t met. There is a new author-focused crowdfunding site called PubLaunch coming in February 2016. We’ll keep you posted as we find out more details!
We have two paper choices—60-pound white offset or 55-pound hi-bulk natural (cream). These are both excellent paper choices. We typically recommend white for how-to books and natural for memoirs and novels. You also get to choose between a matte and a glossy cover finish. We typically choose matte for novels and memoirs, and glossy for how-to books.
POD costs apply to those of you who are printing your books through Lightning Source and have opted into their print-on-demand program for your book. This mostly applies to backlist authors.
She Writes Press and SparkPress mostly publish paperback (perfect-bound) books. If an author wants a hardcover (case-bound), they must consider the print costs, and we would like to have a conversation with you about the pros and cons of this option. Our standard trim sizes are 5.5 x 8.5 inches and 6 x 9 inches. We have the capacity to print mechanical and saddle-stitched books, and well as nontraditional trim sizes. However, if you’re opting for POD, you must choose options that are standard for LSI (our POD printer).
We are thrilled that She Writes Press and SparkPress are routinely two of the top awarded hybrid publishing imprints in the industry. Often, authors ask us which award contests are worth entering. We decided it would be beneficial to share this list of award contests we recommend. Keep it on hand for future entries—and good luck!
The American Fiction Awards – Sponsored by American Book Fest
Category Info: Over 80 categories to choose from (click here for full list)
Price: $69 per title/per category
Deadline: The final deadline is typically mid-July. Winners are usually announced late August.
Award Program Background: The 3rd Annual American Fiction Awards (AFA) are a new specialty book awards focused on honoring excellence in FICTION and are specifically designed to not only garner MEDIA COVERAGE & BOOK SALES for the winners & finalists but to PROMOTE awarded books to the PUBLISHING & ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRIES!
Prizes:
- Results Announced on American Book Fest’s Social Media Pages (134,000+ Fans/Friends)
- Promote Your Title as an Award-Winning Book: As a winner or finalist you will have the right to highlight your award on your book cover, website, and marketing material. Award stickers will be available for purchase for all winners & finalists in each category.
Best Book Awards – Sponsored by American Book Fest
Category Info: 100 categories to choose from (click here for full list)
Price: $69 per book/per category
Deadline: The final deadline is typically late September. Winners are usually announced mid-November.
Award Program Background: The Annual “Best Book” Awards are specifically designed to not only garner MEDIA COVERAGE & BOOK SALES for the winners & finalists but to PROMOTE awarded books to the PUBLISHING & ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRIES!
Prizes:
- AmericanBookFest.com Exposure: A Ten-Month Book Listing which includes your color book cover, a brief paragraph about your title and a hyperlink to your website (valued at $2,500.00!)
- Results Announced on American Book Fest’s Social Media Pages (134,000+ Fans/Friends)
- Promote Your Title as an Award-Winning Book: As a winner or finalist you will have the right to highlight your award on your book cover, website, and marketing material. Award stickers will be available for purchase for all winners & finalists in each category.
Chanticleer International Book Awards
Award Divisions: The CIBAs are split into 16 Fiction Genre divisions, 6 Nonfiction divisions, a Fiction Series division, and a division for short stories, essays, novelettes, and novellas. Each division has its own set of category requirements. See the full list of divisions you can enter here. Scroll to the bottom of the page for contest genre breakdown.
Price: The entry fee is $99 for Non-Members and $75 for Chanticleer Community Members per entry per category.
Deadline: The final deadlines vary by division, ranging between July and November. Winners are typically announced April of the following year.
Award Program Background: Today, readers now have over two million new titles a year vying for their attention. Being an excellent writer is no longer enough to be successful in today’s publishing universe. Chanticleer Book Reviews was founded to discover the best books and then help them to gain visibility in today’s highly competitive publishing market.
Prizes:
- All First in Category Winning Titles will be placed in the queue to receive a coveted Chanticleer Book Review Package (value $445) and go on to compete for the genre Grand Prize and the Overall Grand Prize.
- The Overall Grand Prize Winner is named Chanticleer Reviews Best Book of the Year and awarded the $1000 prize
- All Winners receive a Chanticleer Prize Package which includes a coveted prize ribbon, digital badges, and book stickers
More about CIBA prizes listed here.
Eric Hoffer Awards
Category info: Art, Poetry, Chapbook, General Fiction, Commercial Fiction, Children, Middle Reader, Young Adult, Historical Fiction, Mystery/Crime, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Short Story/Anthology, Romance, Culture, Memoir, Business, Reference, Home, Health, Self-Help/Spiritual, Legacy Fiction, Legacy Nonfiction, E-book Fiction, and E-book Nonfiction.
Price: $60 / $40 for chapter books
Deadline: Since the registration desk remains open all year long, January 21 is the postmark cutoff date for all books either published or copyrighted in the prior two years from our annual January deadline. Winners are typically announced in May.
Award Program Background: Each year, independent publishers release extraordinary books to little or no recognition. The Eric Hoffer Book Award recognizes excellence in publishing. A single registration offers six ways to enter by genre, press, the Montaigne Medal, the da Vince Eye, the First Horizon Award, and the Hoffer grand prize. There is a category for every book.
Prizes:
- $2,500 GRAND PRIZE (the Eric Hoffer Award for Books)
- Winner of the Montaigne Medal for most thought-provoking books
- Winner of the da Vinci Eye for best covers
- Winner of the First Horizon Award for debut authors
- Winner and First Runner-Up awarded for every category
- Honorable Mentions for every category
- Coverage in The US Review of Books (theUSreview.com) and on www.HofferAward.com
- Gold Seal certificates
Foreword Indies
Category info: 56 top genres from indie presses
- Fiction—Fantasy; General; Historical; Humor; LGBTQ+; Literary; Multicultural; Mystery; Religious; Romance; Science Fiction; Short Stories; Thriller & Suspense; War & Military
- Adult Nonfiction—Adventure, Sports & Recreation; Art; Autobiography & Memoir; Biography; Body, Mind & Spirit; Business & Economics; Career; Cooking; Ecology & Environment; Education; Essays; Family & Relationships; Grief/Grieving; Health; History; Hobbies & Home; Humor; LGBTQ+; Multicultural; Nature; Performing Arts & Music; Photography; Poetry; Political and Social Sciences; Popular Culture; Psychology; Reference; Regional; Religion; Science; Self-Help; Travel; War & Military; Women’s Studies
- Anthologies
- Graphic Novels & Comics
- Children’s—Juvenile Fiction; Juvenile Nonfiction; Picture Books; Picture Books, Early Reader; Young Adult Fiction
- General—Coffee Table Books
Price: $99 per entry, and $79 for additional categories.
Deadline: Deadline is January 31 of award year. Finalists are announced end of March. Winners are announced in June.
Award Program Background: Since its creation in 1998, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards has served to showcase the talent of established university and independent press titles, as well as emerging authors who self-publish. Well aware of the challenges faced by small publishers, our goal is to highlight deserving books—those that not only meet our editorial standards, but also blow our minds—to our audience of librarians, booksellers, industry professionals, and other book lovers, domestically and internationally.
Prizes:
- Winners showcased in Foreword print edition, digital newsletters, and international media list
- $1,500 cash prize—one for fiction, the other nonfiction
- Promoted on Foreword social media channels
- Press releases will be sent to Foreword’s 10,000+ list of media and industry professionals
- Finalists and winners recieve a Foreword INDIES marketing toolkit
- Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Honorable Mention winners will receive 500 foil seals for book covers
IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards
Category info: (full list)
- 42 Print Book categories
- 11 Design & Other categories
- 3 Featured categories
Deadline: Final deadline is in December. Winners are announced in May of following year.
Price:
- Current IBPA Members: $95 per title/per category (i.e., $95 for the initial entry; $95 for additional entries)
- Fee for non-members of IBPA:
$229 for the initial entry; $95 for additional entries
$95 per title/per category, plus $134 to cover annual IBPA membership fee (an annual membership fee savings of from $6 to $335 depending on size of company)
Award Program Background: Over this time, the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award™ for excellence in book publishing has become one of the highest national honors for independent publishers. The IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award™ program is unique in that all entrants receive direct feedback on their entries. Winning an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award™ expands a publisher’s marketability and solidifies its credibility.
Prizes:
- Recognition prior to the awards ceremony on the IBPA website.
- Archived listing after the awards ceremony on the IBPA website.
- Two tickets to the awards ceremony recognizing all of the award winners.
- 15% off all IBPA marketing programs during the book(s) winning year.
- A press release template to use when personally announcing the winning book(s).
- A personalized award certificate.
- Special award stickers to affix to the winning books.
International Book Awards
Category info: (full list)
- 32 categories
Price: $69-$89 per title/per category.
Deadline: Final Deadline is in April of award year. Winners are announced in June.
Award Program Background: The Annual International Book Awards (IBA 2020) are specifically designed to be a promotional vehicle for authors and publishers to launch their careers, open global markets and compete with talented authors and publishers throughout the world.
Prizes:
- Results Announced on our Network of Social Media Pages (Over 134,000 Book Fans!)
- Results listed on InternationalBookAwards.com!
- Promote Your Title as an Award-Winning Book: As an honored winner or finalist you will have the right to highlight your award on your book cover, website, and marketing material. Award stickers will be available for purchase for all winners & finalists in each category!
IPPYs
Deadline: All entries must be posted online or postmarked by the final deadline of February. Three to six medalists per category will be named in April.
Category info: (full list)
- 85 General Categories
- 11 Ebook Categories
- 12 Regional Categories
Price: $85-$95
Award Program Background:
The Independent Publisher Book Awards were conceived in 1996 as a broad-based, unaffiliated awards program open to all members of the independent publishing industry,and are open to independent authors and publishers worldwide who produce books intended for an English speaking audience. The awards are intended to bring increased recognition to the thousands of exemplary independent, university, and self-published titles published each year. Since the inaugural contest in 1996, over 5,000 books have received “IPPY“ Awards.
Prizes:
- Featured in a series of articles at IndependentPublisher.com which had 80,000+ unique visitors in the past year
- Inclusion in press releases sent to over 2,000 publishing industry media outlets
- Two passes, valued at $300, to the IPPY gala held during BookExpo America
- A Winner’s Celebration Packet with set of book seals, official winner’s certificate, and a medal.
Jewish Book Awards
Deadline: All books must be received by the end of September with a completed entry form. The winner are announced in January of the following year.
Category Info: American Jewish Studies, Anthologies and Collections, Autobiographies and Memoirs, Children’s Literature, Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice, Debut Fiction, Non-Fiction, Education, Poetry, Young Adult, Women Studies, Scholarship and Cookbooks
Price: $150
Award Program Background: Inaugurated in 1950, the National Jewish Book Awards is the longest running North American awards program of its kind and is recognized as the most prestigious. The Awards are intended to recognize authors, and encourage reading, of outstanding English language books of Jewish interest.
Prizes:
- to encourage the reading of meritorious books
- to recognize authors of outstanding Jewish literature
- to stimulate others to further literary creativity
- to acknowledge original contributions to scholarship
Lambda Literary Awards (Lammy Award)
Deadline: Submissions open around September and are open until November.
Category Info: Anthology, Children’s/Young Adult, Drama, Erotica, Graphic Novel, Nonfiction, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror, Studies, General Fiction, Memoir/Biography, Mystery, Poetry and Romance.
Price: $55
Award Program Background: For over 30 years, the Lambda Literary Awards (the “Lammys”) have identified and honored the best lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender books. The Lammys, which receive national and international media attention, bring together 600 attendees—including nominees, celebrities, sponsors, and publishing executives—to celebrate excellence in LGBTQ publishing. It is the most prestigious and glamorous LGBTQ literary event in the world.
Prizes:
- Lambda Literary’s Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction honors lesbian/queer-identified women and trans/gender non-conforming nonfiction authors and includes a cash prize of $2,500.
- Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers recognizes LGBTQ-identified writers whose work demonstrates their strong potential for promising careers and includes a cash prize of $1000.
- Visionary Award on individuals who have broken new ground in the field of LGBTQ literature and publishing.
- Trustee Award on individuals who have broken new ground in the field of LGBT literature, publishing, filmmaking, journalism, playwriting, etc
- Publishing Professional Award honors a distinguished individual in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community whose innovative work in the publishing industry promotes and promulgates LGBTQ literature.
Living Now Book Awards
Deadline: Final entry deadline in late June. Three to five medalists per category will be named on or about the end of July.
Category info: (full list)
- 25 Living Now categories
- 5 Evergreen categories
Price: $75 per category
Award Program Background:
The Living Now Book Awards are designed to bring increased recognition to the year’s very best lifestyle books and their creators. This contest is for lifestyle, homestyle, personal development and wellness books published since January 1, 2000, and is open to authors, illustrators, and publishers worldwide of books written in English and intended for the North American market.
Prizes:
- Each medal-winning book receives a packet including the medal, a certificate, 20 foil award seals, an awards program and marketing material
- The winning books are promoted on IndependentPublisher.com and to national media
The Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards
Category Info: (click here for full list)
- 40 print categories
- 4 ebook categories
Price: $60 per entry
Award Program Background: Publishing services company Jenkins Group and IndependentPublisher.com created the Moonbeam contest in 2006 as a way to open up awards in children’s publishing to all types of publishers and genres. By developing a contest that would recognize winners in each of the nuanced categories of children’s publishing, IP hoped to bring attention to the under-sung children’s books and their creators who fell between the cracks in larger, more general contests.
Prizes:
- Each winning book receives a medal, a personalized certificate, and 20 sample seals.
- Medalists and their guests are invited to attend the awards ceremony and celebration at no charge.
Nautilus
Deadline: Entry season starts in late September and the deadline is usually in early February. The Award Winners will be notified by email in mid-April.
Category info: (full list)
- 35 General categories
- 8 categories for “Books for Children, Teens, Young Adults”
Price: Varies
Award Program Background:
Core mission is to celebrate and honor books that support conscious living & green values, high-level wellness, positive social change & social justice, and spiritual growth.
Prizes:
- $2,500 cash prize for Grand Winner
- Exhibit opportunities at national and international trade shows, including Book Expo America, American Library Association Annual, London Book Fair, Frankfurt Book Fair, Beijing Book Fair – and other book shows
- Announcements and online listings of winning titles for one year
- Lifetime listing in the Nautilus Library of Imagination & Possibility
- Image of preprinted Custom Metallic Nautilus Winners Seals to purchase and use on website / marketing materials / reprints of book
Next Generation Indie Book Awards
Deadline: Completed entry form, entry fees and books by no later than early February. Winners and Finalists will be announced and notified by approximately mid-May.
Category info: (full list)
- Over 80 categories to choose from
Price: Entry fee is $75 per title for the first category entered, and $60 for each additional category entered. For example, if you enter one book in one category, the total fee is $75. However, if you enter one book in three categories, the total fee is $195 ($75 for the first category plus $60 for the second category plus $60 for the third category).
Award Program Background:
The Next Generation Indie Book Awards is the largest International awards program for indie authors and independent publishers. In its thirteenth year of operation, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards was established to recognize and honor the most exceptional independently published books in over 70 different categories, for the year, and is presented by Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group (www.IBPPG.com ) in cooperation with Marilyn Allen of Allen O’Shea Literary Agency.
Prizes:
- Cash prizes
- All winners will be listed in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards Catalog which will be distributed to thousands of book buyers, media, and others
- Exposure for a full year as a winner or finalist at IndieBookAwards.com
- An invitation to attend the Gala Awards Reception held at a world-famous landmark location
- Five award stickers with more available for purchase
Readers’ Favorite Awards
Deadline: The final deadline is June 1. The winners are usually announced early September.
Category info: 10-30 subcategories in each of the below main categories
- Children
- Christian
- Fiction
- Non-Fiction
- Poetry
- Romance
- Young Adult
Price: $99 to $119
Award Program Background:
The contest is broken down into 140+ genres, and each genre is judged separately, ensuring books only compete against books in their specific genre for a fairer and more accurate competition. Submissions are received from independent authors, small publishers, and publishing giants such as Random House, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster, with contestants that range from the first-time, self-published author to New York Times bestsellers like J.A. Jance, James Rollins, and #1 best-selling author Daniel Silva, as well as celebrity authors like Jim Carrey (Bruce Almighty), Jonathan Frakes (Star Trek) and Henry Winkler (Happy Days).
Prizes:
- Chance to win one of $100,000 in free prizes
- Chance to have your book made into a movie or TV show
- More features including a book review, award ceremony, and publicity
Sarton Women’s Book Awards
Deadline: The application completed, payment received, and books postmarked no later than November 15. Winners are typically announced in January of the following year.
Category info: Memoir; Nonfiction: Biography, Collective biography, Edited diaries, Scholarly studies of women’s literature, Anthologies; Contemporary Fiction; Historical Fiction.
Price: $90 to $110. (All entries include a one-year membership in the Story Circle Network).
Award Program Background:
The Sarton Women’s Book Awards™ are sponsored by the Story Circle Network, an international nonprofit association of women writers. The Story Circle Network is dedicated to helping women share the stories of their lives through memoir, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama, and to raising public awareness of the importance of women’s personal histories. Our activities empower women to tell their stories, discover their identities through their stories, and choose to be the authors of their own lives.
Prizes:
- $100 cash award
- Crystal plaque and gold book seals; virtual seal for use
- Announcements on the Sarton website, press release, social media
- Free advertising for 1 year on SCN websites, eletters, print publications (value $600). 20% discount for advertising in the next national conference brochure
- Additional 1-year membership in Story Circle Network
- Interview in the SCN Journal, republished on StoryCircleBookReviews
- Invitation to participate in SCN’s biannual conference
- Finalists:
- Silver seals; additional seals may be purchased; virtual seal for use on finalist’s website
- Announcements on the Sarton website, press release, social media
- Free advertising for 1 year on SCN websites, eletters, print publications (value $600). 20% discount for advertising in the next national conference brochure
It is relatively easy to self-publish. You don’t have to spend much money at all. That said, most authors don’t know how to publish, what’s involved, and what they’re missing. It’s the old adage “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Most self-published books fail because they are editorially and aesthetically below par. We ensure that every book published on the SWP or SP label is up to a certain industry standard, and no book put out on our imprint will suffer the feedback of being poorly published. Brooke Warner has made author education an integral part of the experience at She Writes Press and SparkPress. She holds a monthly call for authors in which she details all the steps of the publishing process and explains to authors what they need to be considering as they move forward toward publication. Also, self-publishing is a lonely endeavor, and many self-published authors don’t have the community or existing platform they need to be able to sell books. Authors also take advantage of the collective experience of those authors who’ve come before them, many of whom are active on the SWP and SP Secret groups on Facebook, as well as on SheWrites.com. We give authors the benefit of publishing on a brand that already has a solid reputation in the industry, and the added benefit of traditional distribution via Simon & Schuster.
The cost of printing falls to the authors and is on top of the cost of the publishing package. We have long-standing relationships with our printers. As a result, our prices are lower, due to economy of scale, than what most authors will find if they go out and solicit a printing bid on their own. We recommend a print run of at least 500 copies to make it worth your while and to keep the costs manageable, and we will talk through sales expectations with you to help you determine whether a short print run makes sense for you, or whether your book should be a candidate for POD only.
She Writes Press, SparkPress, SheBooks are now part of the SparkPoint Studio family, which means that we have an in-house publicity solution for authors through BookSparks—and we couldn’t be more thrilled. Working with BookSparks for your publicity is not required, but we encourage all of our authors to have a conversation with our CEO, Crystal Patriarche, to get a sense of what kind of publicity solutions we might be able to provide. If authors want to get other bids and/or to interview other publicists, we provide a list of publicists we recommend in our author handbook, which authors receive upon signing with us. At the end of the day, we strongly recommend that our authors work with an outside publicist, whether that be with BookSparks or another firm, as our experience has shown us that books without a publicity plan tend not to go very far, and our goal for our authors is that they will earn out their expenses and—icing on the cake—turn a profit. Short of a miracle or a streak of good timing and good luck, the only way to sell books is to have a solid publicity campaign.
It’s always our first choice that a bookstore order through Ingram, but there will be cases where you need to sell on consignment. You might sell your book on consignment to bookstores who cannot, for whatever reason, order your book through Ingram. This might be because they don’t have an account. It could be because they are on credit hold with their supplier, like Ingram or B&T. You may also sell on consignment because the bookstore where you’re holding an event did not order enough quantity, so you supply them with the books they might need. You will sign a consignment agreement with them (usually 60 to you/40 to them; sometimes 50/50). In these cases, this is a direct sale. Ingram does not take a commission on consigned books. You, the author, will typically pay the shipping fee to get the books to the events. The books cannot be shipped back to Ingram because they originated as direct orders, so you need to take back (directly) any unsold inventory. You can work this out in advance with the bookstore. If you’re not close enough to pick up the unsold inventory, you will be responsible for paying shipping. There are more logistics to attend to when you sell consignment, but there will be times when it’s necessary. Always put the bookstore buyer who says they can’t get your book in touch with Brooke, but if consignment is the only way to sell books, we always say yes!
Bookstores often order from the warehouse closest to them. Our main warehouse is in Pennsylvania, but there are also locations in Tennessee, California, Indiana, Ohio, and Oregon. Just notify us what warehouse that bookstore orders from, and we’ll transfer some inventory for your event.
The following additional services are à la carte, and their inclusion in any given book is at any given author’s sole discretion:
Please note that extensive changes that happen once the book has already gone to layout will be charged at $50/hour. We take responsibility for small errors you might find, but not for substantive changes. It’s not too late to make these changes, but we ask you to please try to avoid changing the pagination of the manuscript, and to make the changes at a late stage only if they’re absolutely necessary.
Amazon employs scarcity tactics to get readers to buy books, and the impact on authors is that they think their books are constantly out of stock when they’re not! If you see something on Amazon that reads—“Only 3 left in stock – order soon”—fear not. It’s not true. It’s possible, of course, that if you’re traditionally published your publisher is low on stock, but usually that’s not the case. And if you’re a print-on-demand author, your book can never be low on stock; Amazon has endless access to endless supply. My best advice to authors is to start ignoring this inventory notice altogether.
Some people may get back to you right away. It may take others a month or two (or three!) even after a couple follow-up emails. The best thing to do is create a spreadsheet tracking who you’ve reached out to, on date, and what their response has been. It’s okay to follow up with each contact a couple times.
Amazon will price your book at whatever price they choose, but it does NOT impact what She Writes Press, SparkPress, or SheBooks pays you. Amazon pays you based on the LIST price, not the sale price.
The HAR gets released on a rolling basis. We hold a percentage of returns for the first three quarters, depending on your sales. After that you may see that you move to a flat hold. We do this as a hold against returns and we will hold until we are sure that the majority of your initial preorders have come back to us from our accounts. We may hold some portion of your money for up to two years, but for those of you in Year 2 that amount is generally $200-$500 to ensure that we don’t put you in a position where you owe us money. By the time you’re two years post-publication, all remaining small holds will be released.
Your primary point of contact is your project manager:
- Brooke Warner, Publisher: brooke@shewritespress.com
- Lauren Wise, Associate Publisher, Author Liaison and Project Manager: lauren@sparkpointstudio.com
- Samantha Strom, Author Liason and Project Manager: samantha@sparkpointstudio.com
- Shannon Green, Author Liaison and Project Manager: shannon.green@sparkpointstudio.com
Create a list of target authors–those you know or those a friend might know. Include non-author experts in the subject you write about. Finally, think big! Who are your favorite authors in your genre? It can’t hurt to ask! And remember that there is a sample blurb query letter in your author handbook.
Basically, Amazon is now allowing third-party sellers to compete for the BUY buttons for books in new condition. This means that, even though we have inventory available of your book with Amazon, there’s a chance Amazon will retain the BUY button and allow third-party sellers to bid on it, allowing that seller’s site pops up as the main “seller” when you go to your Amazon page. Apparently it’s been a common practice for other Amazon categories for some time, and has no been extended to books.
For She Writes Press and SparkPress, proofreading is a nonnegotiable step, and having our own stable of proofreaders sign off on a final manuscript is part of our quality control. However, we do the proofreading before the book has been laid out into designed pages. Therefore, we urge you to review your final laid out pages very carefully, and perhaps even to hire an outside proofreader to do a final pass. We have a thorough checklist of things to watch out for when you receive your first designed pages, but it’s never going to hurt to enlist more help and get another final set of eyes on your final product.
Amazon is effectively cost-controlling your book, experimenting with different numbers to get the sale—but this does not mean you’re going to get paid less. So, for instance, you might be selling your print book for $15, and Amazon is discounting it at their usual 20-30 percent off the list price. But then you’ll see that one day—maybe for a day, maybe for a week—that they are selling your book for $9. In these cases, Amazon is undercutting their own profit, and you get the same payment from them regardless.
We presell your books into the marketplace and we are paid for those sales (90+ days later, which means in many cases we are covering expenses for expected monies from Simon & Schuster to pay on time). At the same time, we are receiving as many or more returns as sales every month, which we have to pay back. We receive checks for the entire list from Simon & Schuster. It’s not a book-by-book accounting system. This means that although we’ve been paid (or are expecting payment soon) for the entire amount reflected on your statement, we are on a constantly “revolving door” basis with Simon & Schuster, paying back as much as we’re getting month-to-month. Some of you have expressed concerns that we are sitting on your money, or using your money to float company expenses while we hold your returns. This is not the case, and Simon & Schuster’s accounting and payment process doesn’t work this way. We consider all sales “soft” sales until we have a better handle on your returns. We view our returns as a whole, not book by book, author by author. It takes a full year for us to have an accurate gauge on sales, with returns sometimes being as high as 60%. We let go of reserves against returns each quarter, allocating the monies due as it makes itself apparent that hard sales have been processed. We realize it’s difficult to look at the hold against returns because it feels like that’s earnings we’re withholding, especially if you feel like your returns will be less, but since the book industry is for all intents and purposes a consignment business, we need to be sure we’re measuring through the register “hard” sales from quarter to quarter, and not just the “soft” preorder sales.