The best reason to choose us is that we know what we're doing. Period. We offer
a complete publishing experience without the fluff, hype, and used-car sales techniques
employed by others. We know what it takes to publish a good book, and our staff
is dedicated to providing our authors the best advice about book covers, formatting,
editing, printing, and marketing. We won't just tell you what you want to hear to
in order to make a sale or quickly move you along through our process. We respect
you too much for that.
There are more books being published today than ever before. In order for a book
to stand out, it needs to meet (if not exceed) the same quality standards as a similar
book published by a well-known author or large publishing house.
Don't just take our word for it though. Read our testimonials.
We offer the best of both traditional and self-publishing.
Every book should have a chance to compete in the marketplace. To ensure that, we
combine our knowledge and experience in traditional book publishing with innovative
book marketing. We provide real advice and help every step of the way. We've done
what no other self-publishing company has ever done: hired people from major publishing
houses to bring the best of traditional publishing to self-publishing.
Learn more about traditional book distribution.
You own everything we create for you.
Every interior file, cover design, website, sell sheet, press release, and anything
else we create for your book is yours. You own it all and never have to pay a fee
to get your original production files from us. Almost every other self-publishing
company makes you pay to get your source files or doesn't provide them at all. Why?
We have no idea. At Mill City Press there's no fuzzy language about who owns what.
It's yours whenever you want / need it.
We pass on wholesale printing costs for any size book order.
For a self-published book to have any chance to compete, it needs to have a retail
price close to that of other published books in the same genre. Every other self-publishing
company marks up printing; the average markup is between 50 and 150 percent. If
your printing is marked up that high, the retail price of your book will be artificially
inflated.
Our authors receive 100 percent royalties (after third-party retailer fees).
Mill City Press was the first self-publishing company to offer real 100 percent
royalties. Other companies said they did it, but their 100 percent royalties were
calculated after marking up the printing costs, which means the royalty percentage
was fake. Other than what third parties (i.e., wholesalers, distributors, retailers)
make on each book sale, Mill City Press doesn't take a dime.
Learn more about royalty calculations.
We have a patented eBook conversion system and eBook distribution options for any
device.
Using our patented eBook conversion service, your book will be formatted as a .mobi
and .epub file. The .mobi format is used for Amazon's Kindle, while the .epub file,
sometimes called the universal format, is compatible with all other eReading devices.
In addition to conversion, we also offer eBook distribution options for the iBookstore,
Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Amazon.com, the Sony Reader Store, and more.
See our list of 28 ebook distribution partners.
We won't sell you what you don't need or can't use.
We are not a self-publishing “boiler room.” We don't use any hard sell techniques.
We don't contact you relentlessly. And we don't sell you products and services that
won't help your book. It's just not our thing. Our publishing and marketing services
are top-of-the-line and innovative. We want your business, but we won't harass you
to get it.
Your sales, royalties, and inventory levels are reported in real time.
We spent a lot of time and money developing our author reporting system. We've made
major updates during 2009 and 2010. In 2011, we made even more. Authors who have
us manage sales from their author website can see inventory levels and website sales
in real time, and we provide monthly statements for authors with any level of distribution.
Plus, for sales through distributors, wholesalers, and retailers, our reports will
show you when, where, and how your book was sold.
Our innovative marketing programs are designed to generate interest in your book.
We are deeply committed to an integrated, efficient, and cost-effective online marketing
strategy for our company. We apply these same techniques to book marketing for our
authors. We create fabulous, search engine optimized
author websites and offer online marketing programs
designed to get your book liked, tweeted about, and blogged about. We also offer
traditional book publicity
services.
Complete transparency. We want you to read our contract. Every fee is disclosed
up front.
Every fee you could ever incur working with us is disclosed on our website and in
our publishing contract. Our contract details the publishing timelines so that you
have a complete understanding of how each step of the process works. Don't sign
our contract or anyone else's without reading and understanding it.
