Frequently Asked Questions

1. Do authors have to pay KenArnoldBooks to publish their work?

No. We are not a subsidy publishing company. We offer standard contracts and royalty terms to our authors.

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2. What is a standard contract?
One by which the author assigns to KAB all publishing rights, but retains copyright, in return for which we publish and sell your book and pay you a royalty.

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3. What royalties do you pay and how often?
On most books, we pay the author a royalty of 30% of net receipts (what KAB actually receives) on sales through Amazon.com, and 10% of net receipts on sales through bookstores and other venues. Royalty rates may vary, depending on the book, however.

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4. Are your books sold through Borders, Barnes & Noble, and the other large chains?
Our books will soon be available for order from LightningSource, a digital print partner of Ingram, so that any bookstore can order our titles, including the chains. We do not, however, sell directly to the chains because of the high cost of collections and returns. We prefer to work directly with independent bookstores, to whom we offer competitive terms.

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5. Amazon works differently?
Yes. Amazon prints our books as they are ordered and we print books for our partner bookstores as they are ordered. Amazon also buys through the wholesalers, but we work with a subsidiary of Amazon, BookSurge, which keeps our digital files and prints the books as they are ordered. BookSurge is, in effect, our printer. This arrangement eliminates returns and the additional overhead costs of managing collections.

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6. Do your books, printed digitally, look like "real" books?
Yes. They look exactly like other books. Our covers are professionally designed, as are our interiors, and we use exactly the same software systems that other publishers use to create our books. The difference is that ours are printed digitally, and books not printed in that fashion are created by off-set printing processes. The differences are technical; the quality is similar.

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7. What do you mean when you say you have bookstore partners?
We will sell our books through bookstores that are willing to deal directly with us. We look for stores in an author's region or city to stock his/her book--and are working on developing relationships with stores in the Pacific Northwest--but will gladly sell our other books to any store that accepts our terms. We offer competitive discount terms to stores; we just don't accept returns. We think that this approach will support the independent stores.

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8. Do you work with agents?
We do not "buy" manuscripts from agents, although we will work with an author's agent after we have contracted for a book to help the author sell subsidiary rights. (We also work to sell subsidiary rights for our authors and may use agents to assist us in doing that.)

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9. Do you give advances?
No, we do not give advances, and that is the primary reason we do not work with agents, who always require advances. This approach allows us to work directly and more closely with our authors who otherwise have to pay an agent's commission of as much as 15% of their royalties. Also, because we pay quarterly, you receive the money you're owed more quickly, making an advance less necessary.

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10. How long will my book stay in print?
It need never go out of print. Since we do not make decisions about how long to keep a book in print based on the costs of keeping copies in a warehouse--as traditional publishers do--we can literally offer it for sale as long as we want. You will never see your book discounted for a "Publishers Overstock Sale"--or "remaindered" on some sidewalk book table along with old copies of 1930's cookbooks.

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