Who can get a book-blog?

YOU can get a book-blog, if you meet a few simple criteria:

• Your work is entirely original — no borrowed characters or worlds.
• You have a couple of chapters (or a few short stories) completed.
• The work is literary in nature (not self-help, how-to, etc.)
• The material is primarily textual (picture heavy works are not yet realistic for the technology).
• You are willing to make 2-4 chapters (stories) public.
• You are interested in interacting with readers to improve your manuscript.
• Your goal is publication in ebook and print formats.

That’s me! How do I get started?

First, you submit your initial 1-3 chapters of material via email to editor@litsam.com. Our criteria for topic and style are fairly open. We will want to make sure your work conforms to our requirements, and that it shows potential. Once we’ve screened your work for format suitability, we will open a conversation with you about the reader-interaction process. Litsam is NOT an automated publishing process, so we will open a conversation with you about what you can expect going forward.

If your manuscript is a good candidate, we will discuss setting realistic schedules that fit your goals, and together we will create a subdomain for your blog. The name of your subdomain should be a word that a search engine might match to your book. We do not necessarily recommend choosing the title of the book, because this often changes after reader input. A word related to your central topic might be a good choice. This subdomain is difficult to change later, so we will help you choose well.

Setting up your book-blog

You’re in! It’s time to set up your book. Here’s how to get started:

• Log in to Litsam. You should see a new option in the black bar at the top of the page that takes you to your new blog!
• If you’ve used WordPress before, this interface will seem familiar. We’ve used the WordPress framework as a foundation.
• In the menu you should see “Book Metadata”. Fill in as much information as you can here.
• Next, visit Appearance->Background and Appearance->Header to customize the look of your site.
• Finally, add each chapter (or story) from your book by using Chapter->add new. By default the navigation will show these chapters in the order you add them, but this can be changed with Chapters->re-order.
• You can make chapters private (nobody can see them but you) while you’re getting the site set up. When you’re ready to let others visit your book, make the first 2-4 chapters public, then lock the rest of the chapters using a password. (Look on the right hand side, near where you publish each chapter.)
• Once you have public content, contact us and we will generate a group for your book. You can post a welcome message with the password, and interested readers can ask to join the group. Feel free to visit their pages to see how they interact with others on the site before deciding whether to add them.

Publication

If your manuscript is eventually selected for publication we will begin working closely with you. Our publishing process is fairly traditional — we go through an editorial pass, lay your book out using InDesign, and create or commission a professional cover. The time from acceptance to final publication generally ranges from six months to a year. Our contract provides the most generous author royalties for traditional publishing that we have found. Most ebook vendors take approximately 30% of cover. We take another 20% of cover, and you retain the balance. Paper book prices can vary, so to protect your royalties if a third party reduces their sale price, we split royalties from third parties 30%/70% with you.

How can we offer these royalties for books that receive editorial services, professional layout, and great covers? We’d like to say it’s entirely because of our great faith in every book we produce, but the truth is that we choose many books for their literary merit, not their commercial value. We want to be able to take risks on books that should be published.

To accomplish this while still providing the lion’s share of profit for commercially successful books to authors, we cover direct production costs first. We use ebook sales to bootstrap paper book production, and we share the risk of market failure with the author. This means your first royalty check comes after production costs are covered, but your profits from there are higher than any in the industry. No author will EVER owe Litsam money for production of a book. If a book fails to meet production costs, Litsam takes the loss.