iUniverse and Me

Well, it's been two months since I finished writing the second book, now titled ARTIFICIAL INTENTIONS. Lots of re-reading and proofreading going on, with able assistance being provided by my team: Roxanne, Deborah and Sheila! Thank you ladies.

To get ready for publication, I contacted my printer in Victoria and got a quote and also contacted several printers here in the Ottawa area -- only one of which had the decency to get back to me and provide a quote! Their loss!!

And then I got an email......which was from iUniverse (I'm on their mailing list) www.iuniverse.com. Normally I delete them but because I was on vacation and in "vacation mode" (read: nothing to do), I actually took a minute and looked at the sales pitch. All publications were being offered half off! Which got me thinking.........

Why not try a different route this time? You see, iUniverse has it all (so they say). They help you format the book, they'll produce the covers, they'll make the book available on their website, and on the websites of such places as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., etc. They do the printing, the shipping, collect the money, etc., etc.

And.....at 50% off the regular price, I thought, why not give them both of my books? The total cost will be a little bit more than what I would pay to the printer in Victoria to print 100 copies. And if I did the same with the second book as I did with the first book (i.e. print my own), I'd be responsible for advertising, shipping, collecting the money, etc., etc.

So, I'm hoping and crossing my fingers that this has been a good decision. I have a friend who is using iUniverse and he assures me that so far, so good. His book isn't published yet (it takes anywhere from 90 to 120 days to get it out) but he says he's had a good experience so far with them.

For those of you not in the know, so to speak, iUniverse (and many, many other similar companies) are Print On Demand (POD) publishers. Once all the front end "stuff" is done, and consumers want to buy the book, they place an order with iUniverse and iUniverse prints it, ships it and collects the money (and ultimately pays me a royalty).

iUniverse has a great website which takes you (the author) through many steps to getting the book published. Yesterday I managed to get the manuscript for my first book uploaded as well as completing several other tasks. The one problem so far that I've run into is not knowing how to go "back" and update things already submitted or to complete tasks that I skipped. I have an email out to iUniverse and hope to hear back shortly.

Stay tuned here to my blog as I set off on this journay. I'll do my best to keep you up to date on the process.