Publish Yourself and Long Dash To Team Up with Amazon to Offer Low-Cost Self-Publishing

Long Dash Publishing merged with Publish Yourself! and has recently begun offering a much larger distribution arm and higher quality books through Amazon. Publishing your book to sell has become easier to market through their customer service.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Nov 20, 2008 – Is there a book in you? Getting published has never been easier, faster or less expensive. Long Dash Publishing, a new self-publishing print-on-demand service based at www.longdash.com and in New York City, can print and bind a trade paperback for prices starting at $175 for the first 10 copies – and the prices go down for more copies.

"We're writers ourselves," said Tim Harper, one of the partners in Long Dash. "That's why we started the company. We aim to be the most author-friendly and author-supportive self-publishing operation in America. We work with lots of experienced authors, but we welcome first-time authors, too. We know they have lots of questions, and we try to answer them. Every book is different, and every author is different, and we try to meet all their needs."
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Of course I always take a walk on over to the websites to see what's what with pricing and service. The website is a little on the amateurish side, and so I don't know how comfortable I would feel with their "graphics design" consultation/assistance.

Their basic package, for writers who have experience in self-publishing, is $299.95, and aside from the free copy, it's basically less than what you would get with Lulu published by you distro for $99.95, and right now published by Lulu is still free. This place only gets your book on Amazon unless you pay more. They also say that they make your book 'available' to bookstores. We all know that means listing it with Ingram, and listing doesn't mean the bookstores will want it for stock. As the prices go up, and they do go up, the professional package for $6995.95 there is a lot of editing, marketing kits, and consultations added. It all seems a bit pricy, though editing usually runs about $30.00 per hour on average, but even Readerviews full publicity package is only $1500.00. Longdash charges $100.00 for copyright registration, and we know that you can do it yourself for $45.00, an envelope, and two copies of your book.

So, do your research authors. You are paying for service, and while I love start-up self-publishing companies, you need to get the bang for your buck ... read all the fine print and the FAQs thoroughly. I wish them well, but I am not sure the prices are really competetive.