Author Information – Promotion Guidelines – Publishing Guidelines – Publishing Schedule
We offer all authors the same terms so it is up to you which option you take.
The Publishing Process – Step By Step Guide
We have informed you that we are going to publish your book. What next?
Summary
We need a signed contract from you. Then publication of your e-book usually takes up to 12 weeks. Paperbacks take 6 to 9 months unless you go for the fast track service. In which case your paperback comes out when it is signed off by you and finished by our paperback manager. To qualify for the fast track service you need to pre-order at least 30 copies at full price. As part of the fast track offer we will then give you a number of free additional books, for example, for an order of 30 books you will receive 55 books (25 additional copies). About 85% of people go for this option. In May 2012 we launched the fast track master class options which are for authors who are more confident in promotion and marketing and have included some incredible marketing, consultancy and personal development bonuses worth over £3000 to give you that extra boost, motivation and support to get your publishing experience off to a flying start.
Free Publishing
As of October 2013 Chipmunkapublishing will no longer offer a free publishing option. Our aim is to make the business sustainable and to continue to give a voice to as many people as possible. *All contracts offered before October the 8th 2013 which had the free publishing option will still be published as previously agreed.
Since October 2010 we have introduced a number of paid publishing options for authors who want to take their career as a published author to the next level. See the Get Published page for pricing and other information.
Contracts
From 22nd of July 2010 we started offering digital contracts only.
We will email you a digital contract. You will beed to fill out all the boxes on pages 1 and 12 and then email it back to our contract department.
You can post the contract back if you have technical difficulty
(We do not send copies of any contracts back so keep a copy for yourself – we prefer to get on with publishing and keep administration time and costs down).
Within one month of receiving your contract (if you signed a contract that needs posting) you will be contacted by us for the first phase of publishing. You should be contacted in two weeks if you sent the contract to the office address (featured on our contact us page).
If you have signed a digital contract we will contact you usually within two weeks.
We will register your book with an ISBN number and then proceed with preparing the book for the website. Your book will be published as an e-book first and then later on as a paperback. This is a guarantee as long as you work with us, are able to provide us with the information we need and follow our instructions. Take our advice and your paperback will come out more quickly.
You will be emailed directly by Will, the Production Manager, who will ask you to resubmit your entire manuscript, send the image you want for the cover, a book description and a biography for the website. The quicker you send this information the more quickly your book will be published. Have a look at other books on the website as a guide.
From Contract Signed to E-book
Processing the e-book for publishing usually takes between 6 and 12 weeks from receiving the author’s final version, sometimes even quicker if all the information is provided in an easy to read and logical fashion. Will manages a team of 15 or so volunteers who edit the books. The volunteers are mainly University Students in an Arts/Media degree who have work placements with us as part of their degree so they are fully committed to doing a great job on your book. We also have a few retired professional editors. The editing means we proof read the books, check the grammar and avoid repetition. We are not going to take out big chunks of your book (which goes against the traditional publishing model) as we believe that writing is a cathartic process and that you deserve to have a voice and express exactly how you feel about your life and/or your writing. We also publish alot of books for a small team and trust your talent as writers.
Please make sure your manuscript is submitted in the correct format:
– Font: Ariel
– Font Size: 12
– Chapter headings: Bold, not underlined or italicised
There may be a delay in the publishing of your e-book if:
– you have not provided the file in the correct format (as a Word document attached to an email),
– if you have not added any pictures yourself in the places you want them but ask us to (we can not do this for you),
– if the file you have provided is corrupt or
– if we are waiting for a cover image, biography or book description. Please email them in as sending them in the post does just means that we will ask you to email to us.
When your e-book is released you will receive an email that says “Congratulations, your book is now on the website” and which contains your e-book. You should then email Jason who will liaise with you about the promotion Chipmunka can do and will advise you on your own promotion.
The importance of e-books is growing every month. They now outsell paperbacks. For fast tracks and master class the e-books and paperbacks will come out around the same time. Free option customers will have e-book first then paperback later. You get to sign off your e-book and paperback before it comes out. For free option – If you want to make changes to your e-book wait until we contact you about your paperback. This way you keep your position in the paperback queue and can carry on promoting your e-book whilst making any final adjustments at the paperback stage. Ask us for the word file back as you will not be able to make changes to the PDF file that we send you. Maximise the viral marketing of your e-book and your paperback comes out on time and is not delayed. E-books are a viral marketing tool to start your publishing fame. E-books are hugely important for your presence on the internet, for the popularity of The Chipmunka website and for our presence on the internet and in the media.
Whilst our editors will do everything they can to ensure that the manuscript is perfect, the responsibility for spelling, grammar, and content ultimately lies with the author and the condition in which they submitted the manuscript and their final online file checking at paperback stage.
Branding
If you have a general browse of our website you will see that (excluding the very first book we did or books we have taken on direct from other publishers) we have a house style. We do have a professional cover option available in the service pages on our shop. E-books covers are white with a central image and black writing, paperback covers are black with a central image and white writing. We make no exceptions to this unless you pay for the services options. This is for a number of reasons:
– for us to help more people and your book to do well we want people to immediately and visually associate with the Chipmunka brand.
– we cannot undermine the brand by having books which do not contribute to its market presence.
– from a brief look at our website it is explicit to all potential authors that all books are branded in the same way and it would not be fair to accepted authors if we made exceptions.
– If we did different styled covers for every book we would not be able to publish as many books.
All books are branded in the Chipmunka branding. Look closely at existing Chipmunka E-books and paperbacks so you know what this means. Since 2004 Anyone who hasn’t has paid extra for a professional cover design that Chipmunka outsources.
From E-book to Paperback
All e-books will become paperbacks as long as the author treats our team with respect, carries out instructions as requires and there are no legal issues with the book. The publisher reserves the right to cease publishing. This very rarely happens. (On very rare occasions an author may behave inappropriately or both parties may mutually agree to terminate the relationship. An example may be that the author feels nervous about being published and no longer wants to be published for personal reasons. In such situations a mutual parting of company can be agreed amicably). Sometimes we cannot get hold of authors which means we are not able to set up their paperback. This may be because the author is unwell, or is not online or nervous about going to paperback. In these cases then we are very patient and give the author time.
If your e-book was on the website before 2009 then there is about a 3% chance that your book was too short to be a paperback. We would have invited you to write more so you could have your own paperback. If not then you may have appeared in a chipmunka anthology. We want everyone to have their own paperback. Once your e-book has been released onto the website, please work with us and promote it. your paperback will come out more quickly. Go for the fast track or fast track masterclass and of course they both come out at the same time
Once your e-book has been on the Chipmunka website for 6-9 months (maybe less).
Chipmunka will contact you about launching your paperback. When we contact you about your paperback, production can happen a lot more quickly if you go for the fast track service. If you order 30 books at full price we will give you 55 copies and you will therefore qualify for the fast track service. The fast track service is requested by some authors. There is no obligation to have this option.
If you have not heard from us within this time frame then in 95% of cases we have emailed you already and will have been trying to get hold of you already. in some case we will have emailed you several times ( and possibly even tried to phone you ) but for some reason you did not receive the email. 1) It may have gone into your spam folder 2) You may have changed email addresses and phone numbers and we may not have logged your new contact details 3) The email was not sent properly due to incorrect information or a typo error.
If we do not respond to your email it is only because we have not received it, because the publishing manager only works 3 days a week or even working on the solution as you speak so please check your email settings and spam folders and phone the office and leave a message. Our phone number is always on the contact us page of our website. Of course most of the time email works fine and everything runs pretty smoothly.
– We email you and ask you if you want to make any changes to the text. You will need to ask us to send you the latest word file if you do. The most important thing is that, once you have made any revisions, you do not change the manuscript’s formatting again as we have to format your book from A4 to A5 and this takes a long time to do.
– We will do the text first.
– Once the text has been signed off by you, then Andrew or Will (who both do Paperbacks) will email you what your cover will look like. You will be able to choose the image but the cover will fit in with the branding style of the company. You can also choose the text that you want to go on the back. You can provide one or two quotes from professionals if you like but we want to know their job titles. If you cannot provide a quote do not let this slow the publication of your book down. We are more than happy to provide you with one although usually nowadays we usually just include some text from the book.. The most important thing is that when you sign of your paperback by email, you check the cover for typos and spelling errors.
– When we send the file to the printer they take the file as it is and do not amend it or looking for any grammatical or formatting errors.
– At the same time the book is integrated to bookshops, wholesalers and online retailers globally so it is not advisable to make any changes retrospectively and it also costs money to do so.
– Chipmunka orders 2 advance copies of your book. One for you, one for the production department and one for the you which we eventually send off to the British Library Then your book is available to the world. We are here to promote it for you and to advise you on the best promotion.
– Remember we are the publisher so we know how the production process best works. Please take our advice when we tell you how the production process works in relation to our organisation. We look forward to working with you. Welcome aboard. You are now a Chipmunka author.
– For the last 4 years the main reason for not being able to publish someone’s paperback on time has been not being able to get hold of the authors by email and them not signing off the text in time. This happens in around 1% of cases. Of course Chipmunka understands that authors want to be happy with their books and sometimes may not be well so we are very flexible.
– If you have any change of heart about being published then it is best to let us know before the paperback is set up as once it is the meta data can remain on the internet even though Chipmunka can cancel the publishing of the book so it is no longer available.
– Of course, most of the time authors and Chipmunka are excited about finally getting the paperback out. Chipmunka are proud to be able to deliver such a quick time frame on e-book and paperback production. In this respect we are much quicker than your traditional publisher that usually takes 2 years at least from the contract being signed to publishing.
When signing a contract with us please read the payment options page as well which was added to our website on May 4th 2012 to simplify the process between different publishing offers and the publishing scheduling system.
Archives – We have left this information on the website as we believe in transparency.
New Publishing Terms From All Contracts Offered From 1st of October 2010 only.
In order to continue to give a voice to more new people year on year and enable us to support new titles from existing authors who write for cathartic and creative reasons we made an alteration to our contracts. So anyone who was offered a new contract from the date above should read the following section carefully and make up the option they wish to take.
From 2002 until the end of September 2010 all books have been put on our website and into the paperback trade. It would cost the company a significant amount of money to publish 100+ paperbacks a year and keep them in the paperback trade. E-book sales are on the increase per title whereas paperback sales on average are decreasing. We envisaged this happening 5 years ago which was why we set up e-books in 2005. This is a fact across the whole publishing industry which will continue as more and more people use technology and there is less use of paper. In order to continue giving a voice to so many people year on year we have made the following decision which we believes strikes the balance of empowering people and making business sense so that we can continue to operate effectively long into the future.
As of 1 October 2010 we modified the way we publish to evolve with the ever evolving publishing industry. We realise it is very important for all authors to have a physical copy of their book as it gives a real sense of achievement, catharsis and self-worth so we will continue to give this option to all new authors.
