Book publishing has never been so fiercely competitive, and securing a commercial publishing contract is like discovering gold – it’s rare. Unlike prospecting for gold, sometimes perseverance won’t get you anywhere. If your book isn’t commercially viable, no publisher will take it on for the simple reason that it would cost them thousands of pounds to publish, and they would stand to lose it all if it didn’t sell. They won’t risk it. This should be sobering to you, the author. Why? Because if you are looking to self-publish, you have to ask yourself the question: If an experienced commercial publisher won’t risk spending money on it, why do I think I can recover my costs publishing it myself? It’s an important question you need to answer before proceeding with your project.

Our advice to new authors paying for publishing services is simply: publish responsibly.

Purchasing publishing services can become very expensive and it’s worth doing the math on what fits your budget. Happily, Zaccmedia is a safe and sensibly priced place to have your book published, because we have your best interests at heart. Hence our advice. We obviously want to make a profit for our effort in providing services too, but you can be assured that in working with Zaccmedia, you will always be steered towards value, not ever greater, hidden expense. Nevertheless, never invest in a publishing project if you can’t afford to lose the investment capital put into it.

In times past self-publishing had a reputation for taking advantage of peoples ignorance and charging exhorbitant fees for producing an author’s book, taking advantage of their passion to get published. Eventually, these so called publishers were nicknamed “vanity publishers”. Some self-publishing companies still carry such reputations, and it’s true that you have to be exceptionally careful in reviewing the pricing structures of what each company offers.

Zaccmedia wants to be totally transparent with you in our pricing, which we think represents excellent value (though it’s still not a cheap enterprise). You will therefore find our Cost Calculator extremely useful in providing a close estimate to what our Print & eBook Distribution Package costs, and our other range of services. We do our best to provide fair cost levels for our modular “Pick & Mix” book production services – these book production services are for those authors who don’t want our all-in-one packages but just want access to an editing service only, or just want a cover design or typesetting, or a mixture. The limitation of using our modular services is that we don’t offer any distribution, ISBN and other details served exclusively in our packages. Since books have so many permutations for our modular services, we will need to verify the cost calculator estimate.

Self-publishing isn’t a last resort for many who want to be published. Increasingly, it is becoming the preferred option. Self-publishing puts the process of publication under your control. With Zaccmedia, you are not just self-publishing. As a bridge publisher, we walk the entire process with the author. If you purchase our editing services you will have the opportunity to review the changes. If you are unhappy with a change, you can amend it. You can also provide a design brief for the front cover and have opportunity to change the text on the front as you want it. Throughout the process you will be given a personal service, ensuring our advice is available with every choice you need to make to create a professionally produced book.

Unlike working with a full commercial publisher, taking ownership of your own publishing process essentially means you hold the publication rights to your book and are the financially invested producer of it. This is different to holding copyright. Copyright is the work that is originally yours, is protected as such, and cannot be copied elsewhere. When you give rights, it means you are giving permission to use your work in whatever capacity of terms you agree. With most commercial publishers they will want EXCLUSIVE worldwide rights in ALL languages, and they will also want what is termed subsidiary rights, which includes audio and eBook rights, as well as rights for using the material for movie screenplays or cartoons, etc. The author always holds the copyright, but if you give away your rights contractually, then you need to understand what terms you are giving those rights on. If the book is outside of your legal rights to produce and distribute it, and that power is in someone else’s hands on an exclusive basis then that third party becomes the Publisher once they produce the book.

With Zaccmedia, we have non-exclusive contracts. You hold your rights at all times and can publish your book anywhere else at any time. Whilst Zaccmedia produces and distributes the book for you, it is you that pays for the service and we distribute the book for you via Ingram. Zaccmedia needs to create an income out of the distribution service, and we do that by taking a commission from each sale. You also typically receive the larger sales commission (usually 60% net), known as a royalty. The rest goes into manufacture cost and the retailers cut.

There are two main ways you can make money in Publishing with Zaccmedia.

• By selling both printed and Kindle eBook editions of your book through our distribution channels which are part of our Package Deals. For every book sold, you receive a royalty. See our royalty section on our Package Details Page.
• By purchasing your own book at a special author discount (usually around 50% of the RRP) and then selling them on for a profit, for example to delegates at a conference where you may be speaking, or at local bookshops, to friends, organisations and whoever else is connected to your network. See our “Author Purchase Discounts” section on the Package Details page for more information on how this is costed.