Agencies with Separate Publishing Divisions

I got word recently that yet another agency has decided to set up a side-project to handle "ePublishing." This division will not serve (1) clients self-publishing themselves (no commission taken) or (2) clients who bring the agency ready-to-upload files that the agency then uploads and monitors for royalties/earnings (15% commission taken). It's for (3)clients for whom the agency will handle all aspects of the epublishing.

Sounds alright, right? That's got to be a lot of work!

Except when you consider what actually goes in to converting and publishing a book online.

Unless the agency has undergone some MAJOR personnel changes and hired cover designers and converters, the work of converting and designing the cover of the ebook will be done by outside freelancers.

AKA the agency has a list of a couple of people they know who convert books and/or design covers and they send your book to them, get it back a couple weeks later, then proceed as with client-type (2).

The agency has probably done extensive work on these projects, even the ones that are self-published, and even tried to sell it in many cases. They've certainly earned their 15%. But I'd be hard to convince that the agency is earning more than that 15%.

You should be hard to convince, too.

Ask a lot of questions before signing up for anything that involves more than a standard commission. Who's doing the work? Who's paying them? Get the facts, and you may feel that an increased commission is justified...or you might not.

EBook Quality Control

Guys, this is going to seem like shameless self-promotion. But it's not. Because it's Ann Rockley saying these things, not me. And see, I'm linking...so I'm shamelessly promoting...both of us?

Oh, whatever. Don't you judge me...what're you doing? Writing a query letter?!?! AKA shamelessly self-promoting your BOOK!?

Pshaw. Whatevs.

If you want to self publish a book (you+Amazon/BN/Smashwords=book!, not the ePublisher model--see here), you have to code it.

You can't just save it as a webpage or upload the doc to Amazon, etc. I'm sorry, you just can't. Ann lists some common problems she's seen in ebooks in the link above. I've seen some crazy crap too. More than that, I've worked through those problems. Like why Amazon doesn't understand the italic command on page 4, but it does on page 97. Oh, it's because I didn't close that one tag...blargh.

Hiring someone to format your ebook seems expensive. It seems like an extra step. It's not. There are a lot of awesome people out there that can help you. I can. Joshua Tallent can, and has been an invaluable resource as I've learned the ropes. Ann's company does it. Lots of others, too. Hire one of us.