What Our Self-Publishing Service is all about
Say you are an author with a story to tell but you don’t have a publisher. We at St Edward’s Press think we may be able to help you… If you send us your story in Word, within a few weeks and for an appropriate fee, you will receive a boxful of books – you decide how many.
If this interests you, your first question will naturally be, what’s it going to cost?
And as usual the answer depends on so many different factors:
1. Do you want us to add illustrations to your text?
2. Do want us to arrange proof-reading, or for a cover to be designed?
3. Do you want an ISBN? (We tend to advise against this for the first run.)
And there are some more similar questions on our application form.
You should be aware that we contract out most of the extra work but we only charge you what they charge us. Since we will be the ones liaising with the printers, etc., when we know what you want, we will cost the job at the outset, ask for the money from you up-front and, as tends to happen, if there is any money left at the end, we will return that balance to you.
You should also be aware that you will be the publisher. This means that we will not, unless asked, have the manuscript proof-read. Nor will we do any marketing, although we will supply you with an Advanced Information Sheet (AI Sheet) for you to use when telling others about your book.
If you want a rough guide to what this is likely to cost, and if, for example, you have written a book of no more than 100 pages or 25,000 words; if it’s ready to print and if you supply your own cover, then for £500 including VAT we will arrange for 50 copies to be delivered to your doorstep. That’s a cost of £10 per copy but, thanks to the wonders of modern printing, if you want any more copies after that, and you ask us to help with arranging that, the price per copy is likely to drop to well below £3. If you price your book at £10 excluding postage, then you will be able to make about a 250% mark up on direct sales that you make.
Of course you are free to get the book printed without our help. Our aim is to help those who have prepared a manuscript but don’t know how to go about turning all their painstaking efforts into an actual book.
For further details, or an application form, please email us at info@stedwardspress.co.uk

Hugh Williams, managing director