Help bring Covenant With the Dragons to bookstores
I’m getting ready to release Covenant With the Dragons, the final volume of my epic fantasy series The Carandir Sage. The evil dragon can wake at any time. Civil war rages. Missions to seek aid are thwarted. A young princess born away from the strife is tempered to return and face the evil. It is.
Up to now, the books have been available on Amazon and in physical bookstores through a process called print-on-demand. It sounds great. There is no upfront printing costs because books are only printed when ordered by bookstores and libraries. The orders pay the printing costs plus my profit.
Unfortunately, it costs up to 40% more per copy than if the books are printed ahead of time in a batch and there is a grave risk. Since the 1940s, bookstores have demanded the ability to return unsold copies to publishers. When this happens, I must cover the printing and shipping fees. Up to December of 2020, I had only had 5 books returned and the profit from other sales more than covered this. That December, a bad player with an Amazon store ordered 200 books and promptly returned them all. Other independent published have had the same thing happen to them. I have no control over how many books are printed and distributed with print-on-demand. I can’t even restrict who orders books. In January of 2021, I had to pay an unexpected $2,000 in U.S. finds for those returns. I was forced to mark all of my books as nonreturnable to protect myself. This means that sellers like Barnes & Noble in the states, Indigo in Canada and others will list the books in their online catalogues where books are paid for at the time customers order them, but will not stock them in physical stores. That and the higher retail price I have to charge puts me at a competitive disadvantage.
I have started a Kickstarter campaign to print a batch of Covenant With the Dragons with a lower price and get it into physical bookstores through a distributor. This will allow me to make appearances again where I use my decades of theater experience to engage customers and sell lots of books. My stretch goals include printing batches of all my titles to get completely out of print-on-demand.
There are just 16 days left to reach the goal. If you could make a donation it would help greatly. Even small amounts add up. Whether or not you can make a donation, you can help me by sharing this message with people you know who might be able to. https://tinyurl.com/2p9v9jyp
Up to now, the books have been available on Amazon and in physical bookstores through a process called print-on-demand. It sounds great. There is no upfront printing costs because books are only printed when ordered by bookstores and libraries. The orders pay the printing costs plus my profit.
Unfortunately, it costs up to 40% more per copy than if the books are printed ahead of time in a batch and there is a grave risk. Since the 1940s, bookstores have demanded the ability to return unsold copies to publishers. When this happens, I must cover the printing and shipping fees. Up to December of 2020, I had only had 5 books returned and the profit from other sales more than covered this. That December, a bad player with an Amazon store ordered 200 books and promptly returned them all. Other independent published have had the same thing happen to them. I have no control over how many books are printed and distributed with print-on-demand. I can’t even restrict who orders books. In January of 2021, I had to pay an unexpected $2,000 in U.S. finds for those returns. I was forced to mark all of my books as nonreturnable to protect myself. This means that sellers like Barnes & Noble in the states, Indigo in Canada and others will list the books in their online catalogues where books are paid for at the time customers order them, but will not stock them in physical stores. That and the higher retail price I have to charge puts me at a competitive disadvantage.
I have started a Kickstarter campaign to print a batch of Covenant With the Dragons with a lower price and get it into physical bookstores through a distributor. This will allow me to make appearances again where I use my decades of theater experience to engage customers and sell lots of books. My stretch goals include printing batches of all my titles to get completely out of print-on-demand.
There are just 16 days left to reach the goal. If you could make a donation it would help greatly. Even small amounts add up. Whether or not you can make a donation, you can help me by sharing this message with people you know who might be able to. https://tinyurl.com/2p9v9jyp
Trackbacks
No Trackbacks
Comments
Display comments as Linear | Threaded