Bluesphinx

“Dear Stephen,

 

Your galley has been finished, and is in the process of uploading to the Author Center. Some people have been having difficulties downloading their galleys from the Author Center since we upgraded our website, so I am attaching your galley to this email.

 

Please let me know if we need to make any additional modifications.”

 

 This came with a download attachment for my book. But I had already read the ‘final’ proof, was happy with it and had signed it off the previous week, so now I was understandably bewildered as to why they had sent me another proof to read and sign off. So I replied with…

 

“Hi Ben,

 I don’t know why you have sent me this because I signed off my galley earlier this month, and have reached an agreement on the price. I am now waiting to complete the final stages of the publishing process. I hope everything is OK.

 Please let me know if anything has gone wrong.

 Kindest regards,

 Steve Chapman.”

 

 The explanation came whizzing back;

 

“Dear Stephen,

 

I have run into a problem with your galley. For some reason your book was set up in every way to be a 5×8 book, but the galley is formatted as a 6×9. This is our fault, and we will fix it as quickly as possible. I will have to have your book redesigned as a 5×8, and then have you sign off on the galley one more time.

 

I apologize for this error, but I assure you that we will have this fixed for you as soon as possible.

 

Thanks,

Ben.”

 

 It would have been nice to have had this information straight away, but never mind, I had it now. However this knowledge did bring me to the disheartening realization that after a hitherto smooth ride I may be entering choppy waters. You see, put simply the smaller the book size, the higher the page count, and therefore the higher the price-due to the formula implemented by my publisher. With this in mind, I wrote to them thus;

 

 ” Hi folks,

 I am in receipt of the latest galley for my book, (I.D. 58059) but before I proceed any further I would like to pause to make a few comments.

 I am disappointed that the pricing agreement is only revealed at the final stage of the publishing process. Until I signed off the galley, I had only ever been given a rather vague picture of the actual possible price, in actual fact all I was told is that there is a formula based upon the number of pages.

 So, without knowing what the eventual price would be I agreed with my design consultant to size the book at 5×8 inches. In hindsight I should have insisted that she tell me then how the final pricing formula worked, but being unfamiliar with the process, I trusted her judgment.

  Of course the original manuscript was sent in A4 size, so until the final galley was received the actual page count was a mystery to me.

 My biggest concern is about the book pricing itself out of the market, and when I saw that the minimum price that could be charged for my book (320 pages) was over thirteen pounds my heart sank. I was hoping that it would come in at less than ten pounds. There is little point in me writing a book that people won’t buy because it’s too expensive.

 

 So what I would like to know now is this; at what page quantity would the channel price [The off-line retail cost] come down to around ten pounds?

 It would have been advantageous to have been furnished with this information at the start so that I could have factored it into my considerations for the layout and size of the book at the outset. Instead I now have to face the unenviable possibility of having to re-design the size and layout-a process that is definitely going to delay the launch of my book, not to mention the probable extra costs incurred, which in the circumstances I think it only fair that they be waived.

 I anxiously await your thoughts and any advice you can give me on this matter.

 Kindest regards,

 Steve Chapman.”

 

 But as you will see, they were not quite as helpful as I had hoped;

 

 ”Hello Steve,

Thank you for your email, and I apologize for the frustrations you are feeling over the book price. As soon as the first galley is created and we have all the information needed to generate the price, we make the Pricing Agreement available to you. Your account states that the very first galley you received was made available to you on January 7, the same date that the Pricing Agreement was first available.

 

I see that you have already been discussing the book size with your Design Consultant, Ben, and I hope that everything has been resolved. Unfortunately I do not know the book size that would bring your price down to approximately £10.00 because I do not know the formula used to calculate the price. It is also often unwise to plan for a particular price, because page counts do change with the creation of the galley. If you have any further questions or concerns, please contact Author Assistance.

 

Thank you, and have a great day! (Oh how endearingly American!)

 

Jamie

Author Assistant”

 

 The response was not what I wanted to hear, but taking into account the difficulties of a complete re-edit of the book, the time delay, and the extra costs that all this would inevitably incur, I decided in the end to go with the 6×9 size and be dammned. So I wrote to my design consultant;

 

 

“Hi Ben,
 O.K., so the book is formatted at 6×9. Was this the 320 page galley? If so I would rather that it stayed that way, because the pricing agreement was high enough as it is-if it goes to 419-519 like I suspect it will, then the channel price of £15.49 seems to me too high and runs the risk of pricing itself out of the market. In these recessionary times I am not convinced that enough people would commit nearly sixteen quid to a novice author’s first attempt. I strongly doubt that at that price I would cover even my publishing costs. 
 I would appreciate any advice or discussion on this matter.

 Kindest regards.

 Steve.”

 

 The next day I received this e-mail in reply;

 

 ”Dear Stephen,

 

Sounds fine, I will have your cover reworked to fit the 6×9 size as fast as possible. I will need you to fill out your pricing agreement one more time due to the change in the ISBN, but you will be able to keep your old prices. As soon as the cover is finished I will need you to sign off on that, and then we can send your book to the printer.

 

Again, I truly apologize for this delay, but I will make sure that everything is done as a top priority for your book.

 

Thanks,

Ben.”

 

 So here we are-up to date. Yesterday I was informed that Windfall of the Wise will soon be available for sale.

 It has been for me, an exciting journey-from original conception which started out as an exercise to see how I would form my thoughts and ideas on the subject into a coherent structure. As I did that it evolved into a book. There then followed feelings of eager anticipation as I went through the hoops and over the hurdles of the publishing process to get my book out there onto the shop shelves.

 So far I have enjoyed every step of it, probably much more than my dear and long suffering wife who has graciously indulged me and my need to devote so much time to this and by that token so little time to her. She now justifiably considers herself a “computer widow”!

 But…when the succulent and well deserved reward comes rolling abundantly in she will see that the sacrifice has all been worth it-ha, ha!

 I hope that the next post will be to tell you that the book is about to launch.

 Until then, Thank you, and have a great day!