Self Publish With BookBaby

[MikeAngel]

What David said, plus - I'd rather pour the money into cover design or editing.

I'd rather not pour money. Any dolt can do cover design. Given enough space & time from a piece of writing, any dolt can edit it too. Easy for me to say, I have a great friend or two who is an eagle-eyed editor.

[sandynight]

Sounds like a middle-man scam to me. They do the up-load, they get the money from the sellers, then they turn around and give you your money. What if you sold 5,000 books and they told you, you sold 1,000 books. Middle-man money in their pocket. 

[David 'Half-Orc' Dalglish]

I'd rather not pour money. Any dolt can do cover design. Given enough space & time from a piece of writing, any dolt can edit it too. Easy for me to say, I have a great friend or two who is an eagle-eyed editor.

I can't decide if you're saying anyone can claim they can do cover design regardless of skill, or you seriously think that any Joe Schmoe can use MS Paint, letters, and a single stock image and create a good cover....I really hope you mean the first.

[KerylR]

Sounds like a middle-man scam to me. They do the up-load, they get the money from the sellers, then they turn around and give you your money. What if you sold 5,000 books and they told you, you sold 1,000 books. Middle-man money in their pocket. 

Ummm... isn't that also a potential problem for Smashwords as well?  (Hell, how do we know how many books we've really sold on Amazon?  We take their word for it.) 

As I've asked before, is it a scam?  Anyone have any proof or even rumors of that?  It's one thing if they don't pay, or mess with the numbers, or any thing like that.  I'd say that's a very legitimate concern for any new self publish operation.

At the same time, if it's not a scam, moving to a set price fee for service plan seems like the way to maximize our profits as writers.  We don't pay our editors or cover artists for their contributions with an eternal cut of our profits.  Why have the sales mechanism be any different?

[oliewankanobe]

Well... no offense, but all this back and forth still ignores the issue of charging that $20 fee at all... like, ever.

And I don't take amazon's word for it unless you are implying they actually lie about/don't report sales.  Isn't that getting a bit far afield and... well... silly.

It's starting to sound less like a "friend told me" question and more like you work for them.  No offense... just a wee bit weird.

[sandynight]

Ummm... isn't that also a potential problem for Smashwords as well?  (Hell, how do we know how many books we've really sold on Amazon?  We take their word for it.) 

As I've asked before, is it a scam?  Anyone have any proof or even rumors of that?  It's one thing if they don't pay, or mess with the numbers, or any thing like that.  I'd say that's a very legitimate concern for any new self publish operation.

At the same time, if it's not a scam, moving to a set price fee for service plan seems like the way to maximize our profits as writers.  We don't pay our editors or cover artists for their contributions with an eternal cut of our profits.  Why have the sales mechanism be any different?

Sorry I didn't get back here last night.
I would trust the sellers because they are getting a cut of the sale. Smashwords is a seller and distributor and gets its commission of sales. But when a non-seller comes along to distribute I have to question this. And they say just pay us $19.00 a year and you get to keep all the money? What if a big seller came along? Are they going to be happy with $19 a year. And exactly what is that $19 for anyway, maintenance? Of what? Your sales money, that's what!
I looked at their site and they have only a handful of sellers they distribute to, one is Kindle and Pubit which are the easiest ones to get on to. A writer does not need a distributor to upload their book to them.
Now if they want to charge a flat fee to format and do covers, that is one thing. But I can't imagine anyone wanting to givie up their KDP dashboard and sales data. 
If you're looking to get a book onto a store that requires things like a minimum of books or a mac or whatever, be careful who you hand the keys to. 

[kyrin]

At the same time, if it's not a scam, moving to a set price fee for service plan seems like the way to maximize our profits as writers.  We don't pay our editors or cover artists for their contributions with an eternal cut of our profits.  Why have the sales mechanism be any different?

You're paying a yearly fee to Bookbaby for as long as you keep your book published with them (not to mention any other fees that happen to pop up when you initially publish through them). If you're looking to maximize your profits as a writer, why would you use them? You can use another service that does the same thing for free or do it yourself. I would rather put my book on Amazon and B&N myself than pay someone else to do it. I get to keep all the profits without giving Bookbaby an eternal/yearly cut. As for Apple and other vendors, there is Smashwords which is free of charge. Again, there is no eternal/yearly cut of the profits. In fact, Smashwords can indirectly help you with your marketing and promotional efforts. I don't see any upside to using Bookbaby.

I'm not saying Bookbaby is a scam but I put it in the same category as all those businesses that have popped up looking for ways to part a writer from their money.

[sandynight]

I had to go before I finished.

And if it is not a scam, still how does that maximize our profits? The sellers still take their cut. Bookbaby is not a seller they are a distributor.
And if they do pay, your royalty will go through their bank account first. I bet my sweet booty they'll let as much money sit in their account for as long as possible to earn interest. Meanwhile writers have bills to pay and food to buy. 

[JeanneM]

Keryl,  I found your blog article on BookBaby vs Smashwords really interesting.  Looks like you did a lot of helpful figure comparison.  Thanks for writing it.

Here it is if anyone else wants to read it:  http://topublishornotto.blogspot.com/

[KerylR]

Well... no offense, but all this back and forth still ignores the issue of charging that $20 fee at all... like, ever.

And I don't take amazon's word for it unless you are implying they actually lie about/don't report sales.  Isn't that getting a bit far afield and... well... silly.

It's starting to sound less like a "friend told me" question and more like you work for them.  No offense... just a wee bit weird.

The only person I work for is me.  

I'm just not seeing the flaw in my logic.  As I've said, if it's a scam that's one thing. If it's legit, I'm not seeing why it isn't a better deal for anyone who sells more that $1000 per book.  

That twenty dollar fee (if you compare to Smashword 15% cut) equals 129 one dollar sales on Smashwords.  If you sell more than $129 on Smashwords per year you pay them more than the $19 BookBaby charged you per year.  If you sell 10,000 on Smashwords they get $1,500 if you sell 10,000 on Bookbaby they get about $150. 

Can you point to the hole in my logic?  Can you show me where my math is wrong? Can you find someone who's been burned by this company to show it's a scam?  

Look if they don't pay, if they skim off the top, if I missed a decimal point and my numbers are off, I'll be happy to be proven wrong and I'll blog about it.  I ripped into OutskirtsPress something fierce because I do think they run an operation specifically designed to rip you off for as much as they possibly can.

Basically, I do think saying any organization would lie about sales when you know nothing about them is silly.  Of course saying Amazon is lying about what we sell is silly.  But we do take their word for it.  We can't independently audit their books.  That's the point, we have to trust the sales numbers we're sent from our sellers or distributors because we have no way of checking them.  


 

[KerylR]

And if it is not a scam, still how does that maximize our profits? The sellers still take their cut. Bookbaby is not a seller they are a distributor.

And if they do pay, your royalty will go through their bank account first. I bet my sweet booty they'll let as much money sit in their account for as long as possible to earn interest. Meanwhile writers have bills to pay and food to buy. 

Well, you're suspicious they don't pay in a timely manner.  Other posters have been suspicious of their website saying they pay weekly.

Either way, if it's a scam, then I'll be happy to know about it. 

If it's not a scam, here's how it maximizes our profits.  Assuming you aren't going to DIY the distribution thing (which, yes, that really is the way to maximize your profits) you've currently got the option of Smashwords or BookBaby (and if there are other options, I'd be happy to hear about them, too).  If you sell $10,000 worth of a book on Smashwords, you pay them $1,500.00  If you sell $10,000 worth of books on BookBaby, you pay them $150.00  On the second year, if you sell $10,000 worth of that same book on Smashwords you pay them $1,500.  On the second year on BookBaby if you sell $10,000 worth of the same book you pay $19.  So, that's how, assuming it's not a scam, it maximizes your profits over Smashwords.

[Asher MacDonald]

Ummm... isn't that also a potential problem for Smashwords as well?  (Hell, how do we know how many books we've really sold on Amazon?  We take their word for it.) 

As I've asked before, is it a scam?  Anyone have any proof or even rumors of that?  It's one thing if they don't pay, or mess with the numbers, or any thing like that.  I'd say that's a very legitimate concern for any new self publish operation.

At the same time, if it's not a scam, moving to a set price fee for service plan seems like the way to maximize our profits as writers.  We don't pay our editors or cover artists for their contributions with an eternal cut of our profits.  Why have the sales mechanism be any different?

Actually, what you have said makes me consider it in a different light. It's $99 up front + $19 for an ISBN + $19 for each year beyond the first year, but once you bear those costs you get 100% of the money, unlike through Smashwords where Smashwords takes a cut of every sale. Considering that Bookbaby says they will do the formatting as well, I don't think it's a terrible deal. I still wouldn't go for it, but for $118 they will take your manuscript and cover, format it, and push it to Amazon, B&N, iBooks, and Sony and then you get every penny of every sale.

I'd still rather go direct without a middleman as much as possible.

[sandynight]

I've been looking at their site and it does look inviting but I do have a question. Can you select which sellers they distribute your book to, like smashwords? Does it have to be for all? Can someone opt of say Kindle an Nook and just use Apple or Sony? I could not find that info on their site. And also if you redo your cover after its been published it says you have to resumbit your book again, but can you use your own cover or do you have to buy one they make for you? And I read somewhere that they can alter your cover and product descrip without notification. I'd go over Everything with a fine tooth comb.

[kyrin]

Some other things to note.

You have to get an isbn through them so you're looking at another $19 tacked onto the base price.

If you have a book with more than 30 interactive chapter headings, it's an extra $75. I'm not sure what their definition of interactive chapter heading is.

If you are doing a book with a map or other images, that's an extra $99. This may or may not be a concern depending on the type of book you're publishing.

If you have images or graphs in your book, there might be special formating issues for complicated conversion (ie your eBook has tables, graphs, graphics, or special formatting needs) which may require an additional fee. They'll contact you in the event of this but special formatting is billed at $150 an hour. This is from their FAQs. Again, this may or may not be a concern depending on the book you're publishing.

All of these charges can add up quickly. That is why Bookbaby reminds me of the old vanity press pricing structure. After you pay them, they have no incentive to help you sell your books. In contrast, Smashwords has a vested interest in things. They want you to sell books and provide tools to help you sell your books so they can get their cut. Smashwords isn't perfect but the ability to distribute review copies and issue coupon codes in addition to selling my books in the iBookstore is well worth it to me.

[Rex Jameson]

All of these questions are answered on their FAQ. Here's the FAQ:
http://www.bookbaby.com/faq

Again, I know many of us are writers and would rather punch a baby in the face than do some simple calculations, but for just a moment, bare with me here:

1.) Smashwords takes 15% of every sale you ever make forever. On higher priced ebooks like 2.99 or 3.99, this represents 45 to 60 cents per copy sold for the life of your book. On 99 cent books, this represents only 15 cents.
2.) BookBaby charges 19.00 per year after an initial setup fee. For a 99 cent book, this fee appears to represent 127 books in Smashwords (1900 cents / 15 cents per copy). For a 2.99 book, this fee appears to represent 43 books in Smashwords (1900 cents / 45 cents). For a 3.99 book, this fee appears to represent 32 books in Smashwords (1900 cents / 60 cents).

Now, from the FAQ and the associated pages, some answers:

1.) You do not have to create a cover through them. You can use your own.
2.) You can use your own ISBN if you have one (1 ISBN can be used for all eBook formats, from what I understand).
3.) The payments are made within a week from when they are paid by Amazon, iBookstore, etc.
4.) They claim to be able to push to all sellers within 5 days (no conversion needed) to 10 days if you need a conversion.

Who this appears to be for:

1.) Authors who sell more than 127 $.99 eBooks per year through channels you are currently using Smashwords for.
2.) Authors who sell more than 43 $2.99 eBooks per year through channels you are currently using Smashwords for.
3.) Authors who sell more than 32 $3.99 eBooks per year through channels you are currently using Smashwords for.

Who this does not appears to be for:

1.) Authors who are able to handle all eBook distribution and conversion themselves
2.) Authors who do not want to pony up an initial setup
3.) Authors who do not expect to sell many eBooks through the distribution channels that BookBaby goes through.

Additional fees:

1.) If you have over 30 chapters that you need included in your table of contents, then they charge an additional fee. This usually isn't a problem with most novels.
2.) The custom formatting price per hour is steep at 150 per hour, but these kinds of prices only affect situations where you are doing a lot of images, graphs, etc. within your file. If you can do your own eBook, this is a non-issue.
3.) If you need images other than the cover, you pay a one-shot fee of 99 dollars for up to 15 images.
4.) Most of these fees don't seem predatory and seem more in protection of their own time commitments for textbook formatting as they'll have to convert graphs, for instance, into something that renders well in an eBook.
5.) All service fees are shown here: http://www.bookbaby.com/pricing

My math may be incorrect on these, so feel free to point out issues with the numbers. These guys do CDBaby as well, which does hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. Everyone wants money, but I don't think these guys are a scam.

[KerylR]

I've been looking at their site and it does look inviting but I do have a question. Can you select which sellers they distribute your book to, like smashwords? Does it have to be for all? Can someone opt of say Kindle an Nook and just use Apple or Sony? I could not find that info on their site. And also if you redo your cover after its been published it says you have to resumbit your book again, but can you use your own cover or do you have to buy one they make for you? And I read somewhere that they can alter your cover and product descrip without notification. I'd go over Everything with a fine tooth comb.

I don't know if you can pick your distribution channels, and if not that goes into the pro column for Smashwords.

Because B&N and Amazon are so easy, I prefer to do them myself and save the 15%.  But I'm not planning on getting a mac, or renting one anytime soon, so having someone else handle the Apple store is just fine. 

Likewise I don't know about the nit picky what happens when you put up a book stuff.  I was kind of hoping someone here had used them and could tell me.

[David 'Half-Orc' Dalglish]

1.) Smashwords takes 15% of every sale you ever make forever. On higher priced ebooks like 2.99 or 3.99, this represents 45 to 60 cents per copy sold for the life of your book. On 99 cent books, this represents only 15 cents.

This math is wrong. Smashwords takes 15% of the actual take, not the initial listing price. So per sale, on a $2.99 to $3.99 book, you're looking at something closer to 30 cents to 41 cents. Nitpicky, but it'd add up eventually. And bear in mind, you have to make that $120 back in iBookstore and Sony sales ONLY (and just Sony if you have a Mac). You can go straight to Pubit and Amazon. Again, this drastically shrinks the market they're useful for, and makes it even harder to recoup their losses. The vast, vast bulk of people simply will not make any money. No, they'll be LOSING money, which is NOT how it would work at Smashwords.

It'd also be more expensive to buy an ISBN yourself, so you really don't have much choice but to use the ISBN from them. 20 bucks isn't bad...but it is 20 bucks more than Smashwords/B&N/Amazon require.

I'd also like to know why you magically dropped the $100 "ebook signup fee" which is not in any way optional. Again, this drastically changes your numbers.

So, you'd need, from iBookstore and Sony only, approximately:

($120 first year on a 0.99 cent ebook, with Smashwords cut at $0.10 based on their own calculator) = 1200 sales. So, 1200 sales of ONE book at 99 cents to get back to even in the first year. After that, you need 200 sales a year just to keep up with their yearly fee. And that is at iBookstore and Sony ONLY (and maybe Pubit if you just feel lazy). I'd love to see a raise of hands of just how many people are pulling that off in those select retailers.

($120 first year on a $2.99 ebook, with Smashwords cut at 0.30 per book) = 400 sales to recoup initial costs for the first year, and at iBookstore and Sony only. Seriously, there is such a shockingly low amount of self-publishers who will pull that off for just a single book. After that, you need about 66 sales a year to cover the costs.

This isn't counting extra formatting, $150 an hour if they feel like it took longer conversions for whatever reason, an extra 75 bucks for more than 30 chapters, etc. Again, someone trying out self-publishing loses nothing if their books don't sell going through Smashwords. They will be out money trying to use BookBaby. This is a service preying on the people who haven't learned what their doing, who don't know how to convert their files, who won't be treating this like a business. To me, maybe not everyone else, but to me this is just a vanity service designed to make money off the many, many poor sellers. You'd have to do very well on a rather difficult market (iBookstore/Sony) to have this at all justified.

[Raybrite]

I guess it is sort of like gambling if they are legit. You are gambling that you will sell more books than would be required to pay for their costs.

[kyrin]

I don't punch babies in the face when there is a bag of kittens to jump on. Just want to clarify that point.

I want to clarify another point. A book doesn't have to be particularly long to have a lot of chapters. It's going to come down to writing style and genre.

Also if BookBaby opens a store, they do state they will take a share of the profits. This is in their terms of agreement (along with a few other minor points).

If it's like gambling in a casino, the odds are always in favor of the house.

[nomesque]

Wait wait wait!!! There's more to this BookBaby/Smashwords comparison than meets the eye. A blog post over on Criminal Brief brought them to my attention, and I posted this as part of my comment:

BookBaby looks like a good deal, on the surface. They certainly don’t seem like a complete rip-off. However, that ’100% of royalties’ does eclipse an interesting point – if I left Smashwords and signed with BookBaby, not only would I be paying money upfront (and possibly lose distribution of my popular freebie promotional offering), I’d also be receiving a lower percentage of retailer sales for the majority of retailers (iBookstore is the exception). Even after Smashwords takes a cut, I get 60% of the sale price from B&N – my highest-selling retailer. They also distribute to Kobo, which may not seem impressive to American audiences but is fast becoming the #2 retailer in other English-speaking countries. A good deal on the surface isn’t always so good a few inches down.

BookBaby do pay 100% of royalties received, but for the majority of stores, they haven't negotiated as good a deal as Smashwords have, and don't receive as much money per sale.

Here are the figures:

iBookstore
Smashwords: 60%
Bookbaby: 70%

B&N
Smashwords: 60%
Bookbaby: 50%

Amazon
Smashwords: N/A
Bookbaby: 35-70% (same pricing structure as going direct)

Sony Ebookstore
Smashwords: 60%
Bookbaby: 50%

Kobo
Smashwords: 60% (38% for non-North-American sales)
Bookbaby: N/A

Diesel
Smashwords: 60%
Bookbaby: N/A

[edwardgtalbot]

Reading through this, it doesn't seem like a scam, but based on the numbers, it certainly seems like a massive percentage of authors would be better served financially by directly uploading to KDP, and going via Smashwords to B&N &Apple for books under $2.99 or going Pubit/iBooks direct for books $2.99 and up.  And using Smashwords for distribution to Sony and Kobo and Diesel.

Yes, if you sell large numbers a single title per year on Sony, you'd seem to be better off with Bookbaby.  And if you don't want to/can't get involved with uploading to iBooks, make that Sony and iBooks together.

Otherwise, I suppose if you just want a single point of upload, you might choose bookbaby, figuring that as compared to Smashwords, the loss of Kobo is more than made up for by having Amazon. If you want that, presumably you've completely eliminated any consideration of maximizing profits.

Last point - Smashwords has a track record much greater than bookbaby at this point.  Yes, this includes some of the known problems with Smashwords.  Even if I fit into one of the above categories where bookbaby makes sense (I don't), I'd just as soon wait until a few authors I know start getting checks and providing sales numbers before moving there.

[nomesque]

OK, random maths attack.

I've got 5 books, list price $2.99 each, and I'll sell 1000/year of each per retailer. For ease of comparison, I'm only using retailers common to both distributors.

Bookbaby

Basic startup cost: 5 x -$99 = -$495
Take from ibookstore: 5000 x $2.99 x 0.7 = $10465
Take from Sony: 5000 x $2.99 x 0.5 = $7475
Take from B&N: 5000 x $2.99 x 0.5 = $7475

Total for the year: $24920

Smashwords

Basic startup cost: $0
Take from ibookstore: 5000 x $2.99 x 0.6 = $8970
Take from Sony: 5000 x $2.99 x 0.6 = $8970
Take from B&N: 5000 x $2.99 x 0.6 = $8970

Total for the year: $26910


Edited to add: Clearly it's never going to be this simple. For example, Apple takes VAT out of the royalties paid. But I still find it interesting.

[Terrence OBrien]

From the BookBaby website:

"We pay you 100% of the wholesale price that we get paid by our partners (including Apple's iBookstore, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Sony). We take zero commission, period."

Amazon, Apple, and B&N pay the royalties to BookBaby. I can think of no reason to give someone else control of the revenue stream.

[T.J. Dotson]

I'm actually looking for a service similar to this. Not due to laziness mind you, but due to time. Right now I work an average of 9+ hours a day, when I come home I barely have the energy to write. Much less edit, create a cover, and fiddle with formatting. If theres a service that will do that stuff for me great.
$99 seems very a very reasonable price to farm out some of the drudge work.

I'm a little dubious about handing over control of my profits (if any). I would much rather have control of that myself.

Besides Bookbay, are there any other 'full service' companies like this around?

[Rex Jameson]

This math is wrong.

...

I'd also like to know why you magically dropped the $100 "ebook signup fee" which is not in any way optional. Again, this drastically changes your numbers.

I noted that these numbers were after the initial setup fee (I didn't neglect to mention there was one). The setup fee appears to be easy to hit within the first year and I'm planning to write books for the long term. It's the recurring costs per year that I was curious about, and why I personally tried to do numbers on them to see what I'd have to hit. As you said, these may have been off because I'm not sure when Smashwords is taking off their percentages but I'm not off by thousands of  books a year or something. I'm trying to come up with a ballpark. It certainly wasn't intentional. I'm trying to figure out where an actual break even point is on these numbers.

I have no experience with this service.  For an established author selling thousands of titles a year through distribution channels that aren't Kindle/Nook, it doesn't seem like that bad of a deal for a bit of piece of mind. I have every intention of doing my own eBook conversions for my first books and trying to do all the distribution myself, so none of this really applies to me. But, long term, I'm not sure if I will be handling all of this personally forever, so I'd like to know my options. If there is ANY breakeven point for BookBaby over Smashwords, I'd like to know the math, and I'd like to be informed.

Some of the people that are coming into the thread and saying this is a vanity press option are intentionally misleading everyone here or are just having a bit of a knee jerk reaction. BookBaby does not appear to hyperinflate the cost of the eBook like PublishAmerica. They seem to be offering a service similar to Smashwords, and they have a pricing structure that is interesting if I'm able to push through thousands of sales a year through certain channels. Nomesque numbers are making me even more curious. I didn't realize that Smashwords was able to negotiate a better margin for its distribution service through certain providers.