Book Country (a subsidiary of Penguin) recently announced that it is offering Self-publishing services.
Professional Print and eBook: $549Please note that the use of the word "polished" here does not mean edited. I've seen nothing on their site to indicate they edit your work which is a crucial step in the publishing process. Also, $549 is a hefty price tag for book formatting.
Let us do the work for you! When you choose the Professional option, Book Country formatters will transform your raw manuscript file (.doc, .docx, .rtf, or .txt files accepted) into polished print and ePub files. Choose from six different elegant interior styles designed specifically for genre fiction.
There are plenty of freelancers out there who can produce a nice clean interior book block (print) or ebook ready files (Epub, Mobi, Doc (smashwords)) for a whole lot cheaper.
Rising Sign Books
Self-Pub.net
Just to give you a couple off the top of my head.
User-formatted Print and eBook: $299
Are you more the hands-on type? This option provides you with all the tools and services you need to format a professional-looking interior file. Your Publishing Kit includes a special Book Country interior template designed to work for both print and eBook, instructions for preparing your manuscript and front matter for production, a checklist to keep you on track, cover design tips and recommendations, and ideas for marketing your book after it has been published. This option requires Microsoft Word version 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008, or 2010.
I'm not sure what the "service" is here. It seems to me you are paying them for the privilege of your hard work formatting your manuscript and all they do is use your files to create the final product.
I should remind you it is `100% free to upload your ebook ready files to Pubit! (Barnes & Noble Nook), Amazon KDP (Kindle), and Smashwords. Those are just the top three places you can upload to. There are more. For print books you have the option of going with Createspace and they cost next to nothing to setup a book to be printed and distributed.
I guess the $299 goes to cover the cost of their tips and recommendations, and ideas for marketing your book but for that price you better get more than just a few tips! I'd expect some kind of a media blitz for the release of the book for that kind of price. At the very least a blog tour or something to that effect.
User-formatted eBook Only: $99
Again, I will point out that it is `100% free to upload your ebook ready files to Pubit! (Barnes & Noble Nook), Amazon KDP (Kindle), and Smashwords.
The only benefit I can see here is that they claim to do all the legwork for you, but for me, I'd rather save that $99 and just do it myself.
But... publishing is not the end of the fee's. They will still take a cut off the top of your sales as well.
For a $2.99 eBook sale of a Book Country title on Amazon, Amazon takes $0.90 and then the author is entitled to $1.47.
If you were to upload and sell your book directly on Amazon, at $2.99 you would be entitled to 70% royalty meaning you earn $2.09 on the sale of that book. Amazon takes their cut, yes, the 0.90 but that's it.
According to Book Country, Amazon takes their money and the author gets $1.47 . They conveniently forgot to mention that they are going to take $0.62 for themselves. That amounts to roughly 30% of your expected profits per book after Amazon takes it's cut.
That's the ebook percentage, they also state that print books can be as high as 50%. Something to keep in mind.
There are better and cheaper ways to get your book out there to a wide distribution network. Please don't fall prey to the big businesses trying to make a profit on your dreams!!