We believe that your content needs to be in your voice because we know that as a bestselling author you will be requested to speak at events, on media, in interviews and so forth. Therefore, we conduct a series of interviews with you and do research into your product or services. We watch you on social media and familiarize ourselves with your unique message and personal style when ‘ghostwriting’ your book. Content creation is a combination of materials you already have written, an overview of your interactions online, your marketing materials and any existing written you already have. We then formulate your content combined with the transcribed data from our interviews into a custom book designed with a very specific outcome in mind. Our writers and editors strive to maintain the author’s voice and tone as they help the author to communicate more effectively with the target audience. The style of books we create is unique as they are written as a marketing tool to get prospects familiarized with you and your product or service. The end goal being your positioning in the marketplace as the authority or expert in your specific field.
Your book will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple iBookstore, Nook, Kobo, Scribd and accessible to 25,000+ online booksellers worldwide if that is your goal. We have also worked with authors who wanted to run a very limited edition of their books for specific clients, corporate members or families. It’s up to you how far you want to reach.
We live in an age of brand identity and face recognition. New technology and ways of communicating has placed the greatest value and currency in innovation, thoughts, ideas and knowledge. When you become an author, especially a bestselling author, the vehicle which is your book transports you to a specific status. This is the status of expert and credible author. Having specific expertise is the most valuable commodity on the market today and a book is your advertising vehicle to do that effectively. By authoring a book, you have staked your claim and announced to the world that you’ve arrived. You set the stage by positioning yourself in a way which allows you increased visibility and revenue, credibility, lead generation and sales.
There are many reasons. 1) Assisted publishing gives you greater control. You own all of the rights and royalties and can use the timeline of promotions and marketing to fit your schedule. 2) Royalties are typically 5-20% with a traditional publisher whereas you will see between 30-70% royalties on your book. 3) Traditional publishers expect you to do much of your own marketing and to have you “test the waters”, so to speak. By assisted publishing you can do this quickly and effectively and make improvements and tweaks in a timely manner. 4) Money likes speed. Waiting on a traditional publishers timeline normally takes 18-24 months. By publishing through us, your material can be out there working for you in a few clicks (realistically, in a couple of days). 5) You can get expanded distribution via Amazon or Lightning Source which is just like what the traditional publishers use. 6) You can add sponsors to your book and work it in a way where they can contribute to your overall costs for having a presence or endorsement written into your content. 7) You do not need to purchase high “minimum amounts” of books. The average printing cost is approx. $2.50 and you can order one copy or one million. 8) Having assisted publishing, we can make changes in real time as they happen, keeping your book content up to date and providing value to your readers. 9) You can offer different customized versions for paperback, Kindle, etc. and by this we mean linking to a specific page of your website for a freebie or inserting directions “special offering for readers of the book only” into the book to act as a lead generation tool.
Publishing is no simple task and most people do not consider all of the various elements that go into a book. This is why we recommend you read our publishing page as well.
Traditional publishers have high setup charges which are the same no matter what the quantity and the higher the setup cost, the larger the print run needed to amortize these costs into an acceptable unit cost. Fortunately, today’s technology has reduced these setup costs. Only a few years ago, typesetting made up a major portion of a book project’s setup costs. At that time, a standard 6 x 9 page book cost between $6 and $10 to typeset and proofread. A project requiring two or three rounds of galley proofs and a set or two of page proofs could easily run that cost up to $15 or $20 per page. That meant that a 256-page book would cost $4,000 to $5,000 before you even got to the printer, who would then have to shoot and strip negatives at a cost of perhaps $7,500. Today, the $600 computer with basic word processing software has replaced the type houses of the old days. The laser printer has replaced expensive photo paper and chemicals. New on demand printing techniques bypass film completely. The average immediate savings to the small publisher amount to as much as $6,500 per title. As a result, writers can put their own books into publication cost-effectively in relatively low quantities.
We leave this choice up to you. You can easily purchase a block of ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers) and LCCNs (Library of Congress Catalog Numbers) associated with you. If you purchase them you can name your own “publishing house”. Some authors get a mailbox at a mail center and it is identified as “123 Park Lane, Suite 123, New York, NY” as an example. If we arrange the ISBN numbers for you than your book will be published by “Distinct Press”. The choice depends upon your longer term goals for your book. Are you wanting a bigger business card and a product to sell at your meetings or are you planning on taking over the world with your content? Either way, we will guide you through this process.
At Distinct Press, if you select the ghostwriting option, then our sister company, Bestseller Authority, is contracted to create the content for you. After payments have been made in full, you own all of the rights to the manuscript and content we have produced. You may use the content in any manner you wish.
The law grants you copyright protection automatically upon the creation of your work. Your work need not be completed to be protected! You own the copyright on your work as you create it. No publication or registration or other action in the U.S. Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. There are benefits to copyrighting which you can learn about at the U.S. Copyright Office.
We discuss your goals and desired outcome for your book and depending on that we’ll custom craft a package that serves your needs best. No one will force you to buy 2,500+ advance copies here!
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a thirteen-digit number (it used to be ten-digits) that uniquely identifies books and book like products published internationally. The purpose of the ISBN is to establish and identify one title or edition of a title from one specific publisher and is unique to that edition, allowing for more efficient marketing of products by booksellers, libraries, universities, wholesalers, and distributors.
R R Bowker can only assign ISBNs to publishers or authors who have United States addresses. In our case this means either you publish under “Distinct Press” or you make arrangements for a U.S. address in the form of a postal box.
All ISBN numbers are international. There is no such thing as a U.S. or a U.K. ISBN. ISBN numbers are international, but assigned locally.
The ISBN for your book is easily translated into a worldwide compatible bar code format called a Bookland EAN (European Article Number). Every bookstore chain and most smaller bookshops use bar code scanning at the checkout register. To be considered at bricks and mortar outlets, your bar code must include the book price. Your barcode will be placed on your book cover automatically by our cover designers.
An ISBN is a number. A barcode is the graphic with vertical lines that encodes numerical information for scanning purposes. An ISBN and a bar code are two different things.
It’s a good idea to get one if you plan to sell your book to libraries, but you don’t have to have it printed in the book itself. We arrange application for a Library of Congress (LC) Pre-Assigned Card Catalog Number (PCN).
Our typical manuscripts are 120-200 pages in length. Depending upon the existing material the author has, the length of the interviews and the research we have to do, the typical time to formulate a manuscript is 4 weeks. Cookbooks and Romance eBooks, especially as a part of a series tend to be shorter.
The longest book we created for a client was 486 pages. As you can see from above, this is nearly three times the amount of content as in our regular package. Longer books can be written but this is done on a case by case basis and will require more time and has additional costs involved. Keep in mind, however, that the book is being used as a business card and introduction tool. In our experience, the most successful books pack a lot of punch into a smaller package.
First we must organize your ideas and distill them into an original and enticing custom book which brings genuine value to the reader. A strategy session is needed to see what the desired outcome is for this book. Is it simply a positioning tool? Is it an introduction to your services? Are you using it for lead generation purposes? Do you need credibility and endorsement? Is it your new business card? Are you introducing something new to the marketplace and this explains it? Each one of these have a very different route to get to the outcome and this is why we write with the end in mind. Think of it like a journey from Los Angeles to New York. We know that there are many different highways to take. Are we looking for the fastest way to get there? Are we going to make stops along the way? Is this a spiritual trip or a vacation? Or do we just need to draw a straight line from here to there and make it fast? Once we know this, the rest of the process is rather simple. We decide, which publishing model would be best for you in regards of your desired outcome. Some of our authors are happy to print on Amazon with a fast paperback and eBook. Others want to think more long term and we make those arrangements and coordinate the necessary pieces with publishing options and additional documentations. We then format, design, cover and create and then we go to press. But it does not have to stop there. In fact, so much of the work comes after the book is completed. We arrange for a few “give away” days and we then shift to promoting your book to gain that bestseller status. We have tested and researched the best ways to work with Amazon to get bestseller results. Our team monitors your book around the clock and we take screenshots of your bestseller engineering progress. Finally we can arrange for press releases and media blasts to ensure you get the visibility needed.
For publishing a finished manuscript – We can have your book published and promoted in as little as a month. For ghostwriting – If you make yourself available to us for the strategy session and interviews within the first week, then our basic service will have your book complete and bestseller status in as little as 6 weeks. The more we add on to the package, the longer the time frame from initial meeting to book in hand. This is because several of the add on services are coordinated with providers whose schedules are booked months in advance. Our special relationship gets us priority service and we move at a faster pace than the general public, but if you want our premium services, then we are looking at 90 days or 12 weeks.
Because money likes speed. The sooner you start, the sooner you will reap the rewards and the momentum will build. Each day that passes provides an opening for someone else to come in and fill your “expert shoes”. Have you ever had an awesome idea and then saw it come to reality? Watching television a new commercial comes on and you think “Oh wow – I thought of that!”. Your innovative ideas are out there, floating in the ether and it’s only a matter of time before your idea is discovered by someone else. someone else fills the space and becomes known for doing exactly what you do. You have to let the world know about your original ideas and hear your unique voice now, because if you wait, someone else will come along and claim your spot. Our work is designed to position you in a way where your information, knowledge, beliefs, ideas, experience, values, mission, character, integrity, spirit, hard work and life’s journey are precisely packaged into a beautiful book which is a complete representation of your purpose. We are interested in empowering you to take the reigns and move forward with the value you provide to the world. At Distinct Press, we believe that you have something unique to share and we are committed to assisting you in making your voice heard.
We are small enough to offer you personalized attention and care and yet we get the results you are looking for. Other publishers who take on many more clients have little time to answer your questions and concerns. When you work with us, you get our undivided attention during the course of your project. Just ask any of our authors!
