I heard a piece on the Today programme this morning about a chap who had sent the opening chapters of some of Jane Austen's books to various publishers, with just the title and character and place names changed. Were the books recognised? Read on!

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2129738,00.html#article_continue

Since having the freedom to publish what I want through Lulu I have not tried mainstream publishers but it does make you wonder about the "quality" of some publishers' readers.

Susan

I notice that a few of you have been discussing web pages and the desire to have your own.
I designed, maitain and manage my own page (www.lovesey.net) and have designed pages for a local Bookstore as well as two fellow self published authors. The first can be seen at http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/yongpease/index.htm and the other I am currently designing and working with the author.

I mention it here as given my own situation regards writing and promoting I tend to offer low rates for independent authors. As an example the current author was looking at a web hosting and web page design package that would have cost her over £1000 over two years. I am now working with her to design precisely as she wants and will proivde training so she can maintain the web herself moving forward. This is achievable in with around four hours work plus 1hr telephone training. So bottom line, if you can't handle a web page yourself (and I think every author should have a blog or web page, preferably both) then speak to me before spending oodles of cash with one of the 'rip off' merchants. Typically I would charge about £30 per hour (to an independent author) and we could your web page up running and with you trained in around five hours.

If you need more info on the IT/web side then post here or email me at ten.yesevol|ffat#ten.yesevol|ffat
Even if you don't want me tfor any paid services then just check in before investing your hard earned cash in web solutions. IT is almost as much a minefield as the self publishing business.

taffybach

Here we go.
On one of my off the wall promotional ideas again LOL…………..

As with many of you, I have attedned numerous small/medium craft fairs and markets but I have never tried one of the national shows at a major event (sdue to the cost).

The Living Heritage Craft SHows are some of the biggest in the UK and, as such, are very expensive but always last 2-3 days. They are held at large venues, usually stately homes and are visited by thousands.

(see http://www.craft-show.co.uk )

The cost of a standard table (14 x 6ft) for the events varies from £200 to over £350 so way out of our league.

However, if we could band a few of us together perhaps we could try one of these events. As an example there is an event at Knebworth on 6th-7th May. The cost for the table here is £200.
To make this viable for us we would need about ten to club together to fund the table and give at least a day of their time at the event. This would be £20 each. Les if we get more interested.

I chose Knebworth as this is fairly accessible from various directions.

If we can get ten authors interested I would be willing to attend the craft fair on all three days and 'run' the stall. Authors would be asked to attend at least one day but can spend all three there if they wish. I would limit the number of authors at the stall, probably to three, at any one time so that we are not over-whleming everyone. Similrly all others will be expected to sell all works, not just their own (although there will be a natural tendency to be more enthusiatsic about your own work than others of course).

I would effectively be there to set up the stall and would suggest that even if authors are not staying for all three days they have signed copies of their work available to sell over the three days, which you could leave with myself for safekeeping.
There are numerous other questions and things that would need to be sorted (such a one kitty and who runs it) but that is all details that I can organise later but at this point I am posting here to see if there are agroup interested. Once I have enough I will organise things.

Would we make a profit?
No idea. This would be a toe in the water check. Hopefully at £15-£20 each with the high attendance at these fairs we would be able to recoup that cost easily but it's a new idea so I don't know how it work work out but I'm up to give it a try. Also, as no-one will be on the stall all the time they will have access to the event so can enjoy the fair like any other punter.

I will be posting this on a couple of other forums too to try to band together the ten (or more) needed.

Thoughts peeps?

Taff

Peter

Copy of Lulu Posting…
Many of you already know me from my involvement on the forum (and elsewhere).
In the past I have responded on a number of threads about eBay as a book selling outlet and in summary from the experiences of myself and others, eBay is a good outlet but will not bring in much profit. I was breaking even but I recently moved into small profit when a group of collectors bought a number of first editions of The Spider Gem.

A few days ago I was chatting with a friend who runs an eBay shop and suddenly realised that this is a way to reduce eBay listing fees and to get further exposure for our work. eBay shops operate under a monthly subscription but give much lower listing fees (as low as 3p for one month).

I have therefore decided to open and maintain an eBay store that will focus on self published and PoD published authors exclusively.
I cannot promise massive sales but it should generate a trickle and extend the readership of the author's work. It also opens up the books to those eBay users across the globe.
(as an example I have sold twenty books on eBay over the past 10 months).

I am not planning on running this as a profit making venture, it is just to provide an improved outlet for the my work and that of fellow self published authors.

To make a start I am looking for a minimum of around 6 authors to trial the service (although I can handle as many as want to join in). From what I have read and seen it should be possible for a few of us (or more) to join together to make this work well for us.

I can provide a full breakdown of costs associated with this eBay store and you will see that it really is a fairly low cost outlet (although not as high profit as selling direct to readers yourself).

If you want more details then send me an email at ten.yesevol|ffat#ten.yesevol|ffat
If you provide the selling cost of your book/s and the approx shipping charge based on weight I can give you a break down of the associated figures so that you can see how it is all laid out.

Like Chris' UK Wiki this is another outlet that could spread the word although this one does carry a small charge due to the eBay listing fees but at silly prices of 3p, 5p and 7p (dependent on listed price) there is not really a great gamble involved even if one month listing doesn't sell

This is a UK venture hence the posting here on the UK forum but if anyone overseas wants to take part then that's OK but please realise that sales will be impacted by larger shipping fees.

oh..and on the subject of the dreaded shipping costs I can work this using one of two models (author choice). You ship stock to me and I handle everything OR I handle the ebay selling side and you ship to customer/reader. The latter is by far the better option for self pubbies as it removes a set of shipping charges AND it allows the author to customise the signature as well as taking a small profit from any shipping charge (I generally round up so if postage and packing comes to £1.46 I would charge £1.50).

Give me a shout if you are interested. Any type of fiction or other self published product can work. Providing we get enough of us together then I'll keep you all posted on progress.

__

example of fee breakdown for using the eBay shop option

Method 1 I handle EBay you handle shipping to reader

For a book costing £9.99 requiring £2.50 shipping cost
EBay Shop Charge £0.00 Taff will cover this
EBay Listing (1 month) £0.05 For 7p a quantity of up to 5 can be listed
EBay Final Value Fee £0.90 Only payable if book sold (see below for rate)
Paypal Payment Fee £0.62 3.4% +20p on item cost plus shipping cost
Taff eShop commission £0.50 My eBay shop fee – only when book sold

In this scenario the buyer would pay me £12.49 into my Paypal account and I would pay you £10.42 via cheque or Paypal.

For a book costing £4.99 requiring £1.50 shipping cost
EBay Shop Charge £0.00 Taff will cover this
EBay Listing (1 month) £0.05 For 7p a quantity of to 9 can be listed
EBay Final Value Fee £0.50 Only payable if book sold (see below for rate)
Paypal Payment Fee £0.41 3.4% +20p on item cost plus shipping cost
Taff eShop commission £0.25 My eBay shop fee – only when book sold

In this scenario the buyer would pay me £6.49 into my Paypal account and I would pay you £5.78 via cheque or Paypal.

Method 2 I handle shipping and EBay

For a book costing £9.99 requiring £2.50 shipping cost
EBay Shop Charge £0.00 Taff will cover this
EBay Listing (1 month) £0.05 For 7p a quantity of 5 can be listed
EBay Final Value Fee £0.90 Only payable if book sold (see below for rate)
Paypal Payment Fee £0.62 3.4% +20p on item cost plus shipping cost
Taff eShop commission £0.50 My eBay shop fee – only when book sold

In this scenario the buyer would pay me £12.49 into my Paypal account and I would pay you £7.92 via cheque or Paypal.

For a book costing £4.99 requiring £1.50 shipping cost
EBay Shop Charge £0.00 Taff will cover this
EBay Listing (1 month) £0.05 For 7p a quantity of to 9 can be listed
EBay Final Value Fee £0.50 Only payable if book sold (see below for rate)
Paypal Payment Fee £0.41 3.4% +20p on item cost plus shipping cost
Taff eShop commission £0.25 My eBay shop fee – only when book sold

In this scenario the buyer would pay me £6.49 into my Paypal account and I would pay you £3.78 via cheque or Paypal.

For either method in the event that a listing does not sell all you pay is the listing fee (3p, 5p or 7p) and I can debit this against any follow up sale on subsequent months.

The 25% that I would charge for processing things will go towards the shop subscription fee. I;d start with the basic package (£6) and if we get more authors signing up I would the increase to the featured and anchored shop options. Mind you at a cost of £300 a month we'd have to get a lot of us onbaord for an anchored store! LOL
As I say, I'm doing this as an outlet for my writing rather than a profit makier.