We are always on the lookout for quality submissions from new authors. Bluewood Publishing is a royalty paying publisher and the services we provide are not charged to the author. As a publisher though we are constrained by the realities of the industry we work in. You need to go into this with your eyes open. Publishing an e-book, whether it is a full length novel or merely a short story, is almost certainly not going to produce an instant best seller. The market for e-books has changed since we started out. Growth over the last eighteen months has been phenomenal, especially in the US, in the main driven by the success of the Kindle at Amazon and the Nook at Barnes and Noble. Amazon (US) is reportedly now selling more e-books than paperbacks. E-book sales continue to grow very rapidly year on year but sales remain, as they do for paperbacks, dominated by the top name authors. You'd be surprised by how few copies you have to sell a week to break into the Top 1000 sales list on Kindle. As a new author your chances of that are remote but better than zero.
All e-book publishers are in the same boat. We believe in telling you this up front, many won't. We can only pay out royalties once the third party retailer has paid us. They pay quarterly in arrears, which occasionally means major delays. As authors ourselves we have, from time to time, been subjected to royalty payments over 90 days late, which has not been the publisher's fault. Amazon are the exception - they pay monthly (as long as we meet their minimum), but 60 days after the end of the month. Payment is by cheque which takes time to arrive and time to clear. Some retailers retain fifty percent of the proceeds of the sale. We can only pay royalties on the net amount we receive.
Print books carry a higher price tag than e-books, but this is due to higher production costs and of course, unlike e-books, shipping costs. We use a Print on Demand model, and our print books are listed with the major retail websites and wholesalers in the US and the UK. This will not put books actually on the shelves of bookstores but will allow people to buy them on-line or to order them over the counter. As and when sales climb above a certain level, some retailers may begin to 'model' your book in certain stores but this is outside of our direct control. This has not happened yet. Print on Demand ensures your book is always carried "in stock" by the wholesaler ensuring fast fulfilment of orders placed on them and we never "backlist" your book as a result.
