Simon & Schuster has formed a strategic partnership with Author Solutions for a new self-publishing platform. The two companies have formed Archway Publishing and will focus on fiction, non-fiction, business, and children’s books.
Author Solutions is one of the leading self-publishing imprints and has assisted 150,000 authors self-publish, promote, and bring to market more than 190,000 new titles. It offers various services, including publicity, video trailers, cover art, and advertising. This new venture might be quite out of reach for most aspiring authors due to the prohibitive costs.
If you are looking to publish a fiction book, the baseline cost is around $1,999 and spans all the way to over $15,000. This includes both the electronic version and the tangible edition. The company will list your book on Barnes and Noble and make it available for Ingram to distribute to over 25,000 bookstores. Not only do you have to pay them to self-publish, but this new self-publishing solution will also take 50% royalties on each book you sell through them.
Author Solutions adamantly states that Archway is not an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The major publisher has guidelines for cover art and book construction and adopts a hands off approach. If your book sells really well via the traditional bookstore approach or online sales, you may appear on the company’s radar.
This may not be the best solution of the majority of new authors and the traditionally self-published. Archway Publishing may provide an all-in-one stop, but you can find companies to make you cover art for less than $100.00 and video trailer services for another $100. This should be a company you should avoid at all costs.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
