Services

At Tellwell, we work hard to provide you the best services for every step of the publishing process. Editing services are included in some of the publishing packages, and can also be purchased à la carte.

Below, you’ll find descriptions of our services for:

• Editing
• Design
• Illustrations
• Distribution
• Marketing

Editing

Has your manuscript been professionally edited?

Editing puts a polish on your manuscript. It makes the writing more crisp, clear and concise. A good edit is also about avoiding embarrassment when you are promoting your book and readers comment on all the typos they found. Even the best writers in the world have their manuscripts edited several times.

Editing can be aimed at improving the overall structure and quality of the manuscript, or it can be that extra set of eyes to catch typos and the odd sloppy sentence. There are different types of editing depending on what your manuscript needs including:

1. Editorial Evaluations
2. Substantive Edit
3. Copy Editing
4. Proofreading

Editorial Evaluation ($500)

An editorial evaluation will help you if you have questions like: Is my manuscript worth publishing? Is it a quality manuscript? Does it need a major overhaul or is it ready for publishing after a basic proofread?

An editorial evaluation entails a professional editor reading your manuscript from start to finish without making any changes. Once they have reviewed your manuscript they will write a short report, often three to ten pages, outlining the strengths and weaknesses and assessing what could be accomplished with further revisions.

Editorial evaluation is $500 for manuscripts up to 75, 000 words and 0.7¢ per additional word thereafter.

Substantive Editing (4.2¢ / word)

A substantive edit includes one round of content editing and one round of copy editing.

A content edit looks at the overall quality of your manuscript and how it can be improved. It will address issues related to pacing, structure, theme and overall effectiveness of the story. For example, is the story engaging and suspenseful? Are the characters well developed? Are there sections that are slow, dry, or duplicating previous sections and can be deleted? Is dialogue or, in the case of nonfiction, are anecdotes used effectively? Is the manuscript structured and ordered in the best possible way?

A copy edit fixes grammatical and spelling errors and cleans up awkward sentence structure.

Our editors have a keen eye for storytelling. They will read through your manuscript and make line by line changes and suggestions on how to improve the story.

The notes are made using the “track-changes” feature of Microsoft Word, which allows you to review the comments and to either accept or reject each change to the manuscript. At the end of the day, you as the author get the final say on every change.

As with any piece of writing, there are opportunities to make it stronger. Sometimes it takes another set of eyes to really find the weak points and patch them up.

Copy Editing (2.2¢ / word)

Copy editing catches any grammar and spelling mistakes, repairs broken syntax and sentence structure, and ensures your manuscript adheres to a clear and consistent style.

Proofreading (1.5¢ / word)

A proofread is a final set of eyes to catch typos and minor grammatical errors that made it through the copy edit. If perfection is important to you, then an extra set of eyes via a copy edit is not enough — you need yet another set of eyes.

A proofread may occur after the design process but before the files are converted into print-ready and ebook formats ready for distribution.

Design

Many of the barriers to publishing a book have crumbled in the last ten years. But one barrier has not disappeared, rather it has become even worse — competition.

A well-designed book is an incredibly important way to stand out from the competition. People judge books by their covers. Readers, book reviewers, critics, whether or not they notice your book in the first place may depend on the quality of your cover.

People who design and test advertisements know that different designs can have dramatic, measurable impact on results. The same is true of book covers. There are many cases where a change in cover design has resulted in significant increases in sales volumes.

The layout of the book also affects its readability. An impressive book design can help an author feel a great deal of excitement about his or her book. This sense of pride and excitement is critical when it comes time to promote the book.

A professional designer ensures the layout of the cover and the inside of the book meets all of the formatting requirements required by the various ebook and print-on-demand distribution channels.

Premium Cover Design ($599)

With the Premium Cover Design service, one of Tellwell’s expert book designers will create three custom cover designs to choose from. Guided by their Project Manager and helpful resources, authors will express their vision and expectations for the cover design, then sit back and let one of our talented designers translate that vision into three different exciting draft concepts to choose from. As with our standard cover design service, there will be two revision rounds included to finalize the author’s chosen design. The author will also have the opportunity to book an optional cover design consultation to further refine their vision before work begins on the three cover design options.

All Tellwell covers start with one of our book designers creating an original design by combining evocative imagery and font styles to create an attractive and cohesive book cover that meets the author’s personal vision, while keeping with current design trends in a book’s specific genre. The Premium Cover Design service takes some of the guesswork out of this process, allowing the author to actually see the different ways a professional designer might create a concept to visually represent the book, choose their favourite of these concepts, and refine the design.

Premium Cover Design is only available with the purchase of a publishing package.

 

Illustrations

Illustrations and text work together to tell a great story. Visual art draws the reader in and brings the story to life. Our experienced illustrators have created art across different genres from juvenile to cartoon to sci-fi and fantasy. They listen to the author’s vision, and commit to delivering art that best tells their story.

Check out illustration samples by our talented artists here!

Distribution

Book distribution refers to the process of making your book available to the public. This can include publishing your book in paperback, hard cover, and/or as an eBook, and making the book available to retail channels where people typically go to buy books.

Distribution also includes the process of printing and fulfilling orders, collecting payment, and shipping the books to customers or booksellers who act as middlemen.

Distribution has changed dramatically in the past 20 years. For print books, it is now possible to make your book available to over 40,000 booksellers without spending any cash up front on printing, storage and fulfillment.

Print on Demand systems allow the print edition of your book to be listed for sale with major online retailers like Amazon.com, Chapters.com and BarnesAndNoble.com. Brick and mortar bookstores will also be able to easily order your book through their distributors.

For eBooks, there are no major barriers to having your book published alongside bestselling authors. A handful of eBook formats dominate the marketplace, including:

• The Kindle (Amazon.com)
• The Kobo (Chapters-Indigo), which is especially popular in Canada
• The Nook (Barnes and Noble)
• Apple iTunes ebooks

The most effective strategy is to make your book available in all of the above formats as well as soft cover and hard cover. This ensures that your book is available to the broadest possible audience in the format they prefer.

Royalties

Every time a bookstore buys your book for resale, or people buy your book from an online retailer like Amazon.com, you earn a royalty. In assisted self-publishing, you earn much, much higher royalties than in traditional publishing.

We offer two main streams of distribution, Managed Distribution and Direct Distribution.

The Direct Distribution route can be great for someone who really wants to be able to take control of his or her own distribution. This option gives you control of managing your all of your different accounts so you can log in to each individual account and make changes whenever you feel the need! This option puts you in the drivers seat, offering 100% royalties.

The second option, Managed Distribution, is just as exciting. This more assisted option puts a great level of the work on Tellwell, instead of you. This can be a great option for authors who do not have the time to manage multiple accounts and keep up with the agreements of all of the different accounts. Instead, Tellwell will set your book up for distribution with all of the important channels for you. Instead of managing lots of accounts, you just have your Tellwell account where we will consolidate information for you, and make it all easily accessible in one place. This option lets you sit back and relax with 85% royalties.

Here’s a summary of how we compare to the five companies that represent 85% of self-published books. Tellwell offers the best deal for authors in the broadest range of distribution options.

Publishing Feature*	Tellwell	Author Solutions	Lulu	Smashwords	KDP	IngramSpark
Max POD Royalty via major retailers**	70%	10%***	50%	X	40-60%	70%
Kindle royalty	70%	35%	63%	X	X	40%
Kobo royalty (Chapters)	70%	35%	63%	60%	X	40%
Nook royalty (Barnes and Noble)	60%	35%	58.5%	60%	X	40%
iBooks royalty	60%	35%	63%	60%	X	40%

Giving authors 85-100% of the net sales revenues means we are neutral when it comes to distribution. We often work with two of the above companies (IngramSpark and KDP) for part of the solution for our clients, taking advantage of the best aspect of each, but we use other options where these companies fall short.

Providing wholesalers with a 55% discount is the norm if you want to have a chance of getting bookstores to stock your book, however, for most books we publish you can choose between the following discount options:

• 55 %
• 40 %
• 30 %

If you want to focus your sales strategy on online channels like Amazon.com, you can set the discount at 30% instead of 55%. Thus for a book that costs $3 to print and is priced at $20, if the seller takes 30% ($6) then you as the author would be left with the other 70% ($14), minus the $3 cost of printing. Your profit would be $11 per sale.

Printing

We partner with printers located within Canada, and around the world. We have options for printing anywhere from one book, to thousands at economical pricing.

For books being distributed you will need to know your print-on-demand cost, this is the cost the distributor charges to print and fulfill orders from the retailers, it is ‘free’ in the sense it doesn’t require cash upfront as the customer pays for the printing and fulfillment in the retail price they pay when purchasing your book.

At Tellwell, we are transparent about the print-on-demand cost, so that you can choose your suggested retail price with that in mind! To take a look at some print-on-demand costs, and the associated royalties, please visit our Author Compensation Calculator.

Marketing

Distribution and marketing are two aspects of book promotion, but they are not the same thing. Once your book is available in popular sales channels like Amazon.com and to 40,000 book sellers, it’s time to work on getting the word out. People need to hear about your book through traditional and new media, book reviewers, bloggers and social media.

Effectively marketing a book starts with knowing the target audience, the competition, the purpose of your book and what makes it unique. Book promotion strategies can include focusing on getting the attention of traditional and new media by sending a press release and following up with a phone call. Non-fiction books, in particular, may have a chance to receive publicity in traditional print or broadcast media, if the topic is relevant or author can speak as an expert on a subject.

Getting book reviews is also important whether it’s in a newspaper, blog, YouTube channel or on Goodreads and Amazon.com. This can be done by connecting with reviewers individually, sending a book release, mailing samples or emailing an electronic version of the book.

Building a strong online presence establishes credibility and allows you to connect with readers and promote your book. That means creating an author website and being active on social media.

Authors can have great success holding book readings and signings, doing a book tour or launch event. Speaking at conferences/festivals and sitting on panels can also be a great way to spread the word.

Authors can spend years writing a book. The more time and energy spent promoting it, the greater the book’s chance of success.

Tellwell offers a variety of book promotion services, available à la carte, to help you as little or as much as you need.

Book Marketing Consultation & Strategy ($500.00)

In a one-hour marketing consultation, we’ll discuss the key marketing strategies specific to your genre, your interests and goals. Strategies that may be discussed include building an online presence, the importance of reviews and how to generate them, how to get your book stocked on physical shelves, how to pitch to influencers, media outlets and relevant organizations, plus a lot more. Each consultation is different and the five to seven marketing strategies discussed will be tailored to your book.

The 20-25 page strategy that follows will cover the marketing activities discussed during the consultation in greater detail including step-by-step instruction, examples, weekly action items and outcomes for each section.

In addition, you will also receive our 20-page marketing guide that reviews essential components of book marketing including identifying a target market and sales pitch, establishing an online author platform, and ways to connect with your target audience.

Book Backgrounder ($250.00)

The book backgrounder functions as a book resume, or mini-press kit, and is a great marketing tool that can be used when approaching bookstores, media outlets, book reviewers or bloggers. It's also handy to have at events when doing book signings or a launch. The two-page document will be designed to match the aesthetic of your book cover, using similar colours, fonts and overall look. It includes your book’s synopsis, 3D cover image, author bio and photo (optional), purchase links, website and social links. The second page is custom and may include a look inside feature, author Q&A, or rave reviews.

Author Website

An author website is a central hub to share information about you and your book including reviews, news coverage, events, social media links and provides a way for people to get in touch with you. Think of it as an online business card. Not having one can impact credibility. While a Facebook page, Instagram account or LinkedIn profile are also good marketing tools, they don't replace the function of a website. An author website provides a professional online presence housing essential information in one place that is easy to find, and allows people to contact you.

Tellwell offers a basic and advanced website:

Marketing Packages

We also offer a variety of à la carte marketing services that you can add on to a marketing package or group together to create your own tailored marketing package.

Please note, a marketing consultation and strategy is required to purchase a marketing package and certain à la carte marketing services. For a list of marketing services that don't require a marketing consultation and strategy, please get in touch with a publishing consultant and request our standalone marketing services.