UK Self Publishing Group

 All authors who publish with us qualify for inclusion in our SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL AUTHOR campaign.

This means your book will be in the shops and on display to buyers. Not a maybe in the shops like other companies say.

Click on publish button above for our great packages.

Starting to get your book published is an exciting time for most authors and congratulations on finishing your book. To finally see all your hard work in print and on the market for sale is really satisfying.

The question you may be asking yourself at the moment is who do I get to publish my book? There are lots of companies out there saying they are the best and to publish with them.

Do you look for a publishing house to take your book? Or do you self publish? Well I can tell you that getting a main stream publisher to take up your book is next to zero. The days of getting a publisher and sitting back waiting for the money to roll in is over. Plus, when you think about it why would you want to go with a big publisher to be paid 8 to 10% of the wholesale price of your book in royalties? This is about 50 cents to $1 if you are very lucky.

Then you can true self-publish were you do everything yourself and pay for everything, but where do you find all the people to help you? Where do you find editors, graphic artists, proofreaders, typesetters and printers? Then how do you market your book?

The shops will not buy books from self publishers, and you can’t get Amazon or other online bookstores in most cases to take your book. Sure you can join Amazon createspace but the commission you get paid is not much more that the publishers and you had to fork out thousands of dollars for your book in the first place.

Then there are the Vanity publishers you can find them on line everywhere, they tell you they are self publishers but they are not. When you sign up with them you lose all your copyrights but they don’t tell you this, just try and get the files to your book from them, you will not be able too.

This can all become quite confusing, but we can help. You see we are not just publishers, we like you are authors also, and just like you we didn’t have a clue how to get published ourselves at first. We spent many months trying to figure everything out and after some really bad experiences with the publishing house we decided to self publish ourselves. Now we are using what we learned to help other authors navigate the publishing minefield.

So to help you clear away some of the fog, we will tell you what we do differently that most other companies don’t do and what you should be asking them before you sign up.

Who has the rights to your book? This is a very gray area and you should be aware of a few things. Although most companies say you have all the rights to your book, do they actually state it on the title page of your book? You see technically if it is not stated in writing that the author has control of their rights, then the publisher has all the rights.

This means if a movie company wants to pick up your book to make a film out of it then the publisher is the person they deal with: not you the author. You lose total control. We as your publisher always state on the title page of your book the following sentence. No part of this book can be stored on a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by whatever means without the prior permission in writing of the person holding the copyright.

In other words you the author will be involved in any decisions made regarding copyright matters. We make sure you as the author are protected because we are not Vanity publishers; we are Cooperative Self Publishers and work with our authors not against them.

2. Who owns all your graphics, book cover design, book layout and all the files to your book? Nearly all companies offering to publish your book keep all the above rights to your book. This means that sometime in the future if you want to move on from the company you published with, or want to list the book with another company, or you may want to print books using another printer: you can’t. Even though you paid for all the files in the first place you do not own them, the publishing company owns them.

This means you can never have the rights to your book unless you rewrite it and change all the covers, art work, and graphics then get a new ISBN for your book. Even doing this can create problems between you and the original publisher. Most on-line publishing companies work this way because you have set up a POD royalty agreement with them. What this means is when a book sells you get a commission and they make money from the printing of the book plus they charge a fee also. They are not trying to be difficult with you or cheat you; it is just the way it is done in the industry.

We on the other hand have no problem with you requesting all the files to your book back and are happy to make arrangements to do so. We simply follow the standard book industry out of print regulations and all your graphics etc, come back to you.

3. Do I need a special ISBN number? This is totally up to you. You might just want to print a book for family and friends, our use it as promotional material, and do not want to sell your book in the shops: then you do not need an ISBN. Although we do recommend you have an ISBN for your book. You will also need a barcode as well, without this you will not get your book into the bookstores.

Let me explain about barcodes. A barcode has a lot of information on it about your book: the title of your book, the RRP of your book, the author of the book and the publisher of the book. Now it is the last one you have to consider, the publisher, again if you do not have an acknowledgement that you as the author have the rights to the book printed on the title page, then the publisher can technically claim the rights. There is one sure way around this and that is to get your own ISBN number, this will certainly protect you.

But and there is a big BUT, if you do not use the companies ISBN then you cannot be listed on the global listings services they offer. Only a publisher has access to a lot of these services not an author or a single self publisher.

You can rest assured when you use one of our ISBN and barcodes you are full protected as the author and your copyrights are safe. When you get one of our ISBN and barcodes you have access to pacstream  the ordering system all the bookshops, libraries, wholesalers and distributors use and single authors can’t list with. This means massive exposure for your book and this is only one of the sources we use.

So you can rest assured that publishing with us keeps you in control and we can give you the best chance of getting your book out to the world.

We are not Vanity publishers, we are Cooperative Self Publishers and we are much more flexible with our publishing packages. We understand that different authors have different skills and may not need a publishing pack with a distribution package. Or they already have a book but just need to get it out to the world with our social network package, everyone is different and we understand this.

So we give you the choice to pick a package or a number of packages you need, not what we simply have to offer you.

Go ahead now and check out our great publishing packages and get started on your exciting journey to becoming a published author safe in the knowledge all your rights are secure. To see our great packages just place you cursor over the PUBLISH button at the top of the page and choose which package suits you best.