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For Authors

As we have been working on CIRWEP, it has become increasingly obvious that writing articles and books is one of the most useful things that experts can do in order to become more well known. It has also become increasingly obvious that the entire world of book and magazine publishing has been turned upside down.

New World of Publishing

Previously, large publishing firms controlled the publication process. An author had two choices; convince a publishing firm to invest thousands of dollars to publish their book, or pay tens of thousands of dollars themselves on a so-called "vanity press." To anyone in the publishing world, a vanity press meant that the book was not very good, because it didn't have a "real publisher". Self publishing was not considered legitimate.

Because of these limitations, in the publishing world of yesterday, the number of books that were published every year (and their corresponding authors) were severely limited. Books were expected to sell thousands to millions of copies in order to provide a return on investment. Books that would only sell a few hundred copies were not feasible. The smallest "book run" was about 1500 copies.

Enter technology.

Self Publishing Revolution

Because of the magic of technology, authors no longer need to invest tens of thousands of dollars in order to write, edit, and print a book. They can be printed one at a time - feasibly. No up front costs. Print-on-demand meant that consultants could publish books in their narrow field of expertise because they didn't have to worry about whether or not there were thousands of people who would buy it. Fiction authors could write and publish a book without first getting through the gauntlet of the publishing houses. Self-publishing became legitimate.

The feasibility of small book runs caused a drastic upset in the publishing industry; especially when authors realized that if they were willing/able to market and sell the book themselves (which they often had to do even when a mainstream publisher produced the book), they would be able to make more money on each book. Royalties from publishers were typically between 2% and 15% (perhaps up to 20% if you were already a best selling author or a celebrity) of the net profits. If the publisher sold two thousands books at $10 a book, an author might make $200 at 10% royalty (because only $2000 of the $20,000 was net profit). To make the same amount of money in a self-publishing environment, the author only needs to sell 20 ebooks at the same price (because an ebook has no print costs). If the author did manage to sell 2000 printed books, there would be $18,0000 in profit - much more than the author would ever get from a publisher for the same amount of work .

Possible Doesn't Mean Easy

That's not to say that publishing your own book is easy. As a matter of fact, authoring and selling a book is more difficult than ever because the floodgates have opened. On the plus side, anyone can now publish a book for very little money. On the down side, anyone can now publish a book for very little money. Instead of thousands of authors, now there are hundreds of thousands of authors.

Additionally, publishing became highly technical. Even print books from publishing houses are now computer driven. You can't just type up a book and send in a paper manuscript anymore. Publishers, retailers, distributors, printers, ISBN registrars; they all expect anyone who publishes to be able to submit their manuscript electonically using very specific formatting which is not easy to learn. As the number of books proliferate, the number of each book sold decreases. Getting noticed in the crowded field is even harder. Publishing houses stick with their tried and true money-makers and often won't even consider first-time authors.

How Can HPL Consortium Help

This is where CIRWEP can help. One of the goals for CIRWEP is to enable members of the HPL Consortium to easily (and for very low cost) connect with verified knowledgeable and reliable editors, cover designers, graphic illustrators, indexers, printers, DVD duplicators, ISBN registrars, distributors, and retailers. Each integrated team can provide all the services necessary in order to produce ebooks, print books, instructional videos, marketing material, workshops, and speaking tours. Being a member of HPL Consortium will put all the resources of a mainstream publisher at your fingertips! The remaining integrated components of CIRWEP will enable authors to schedule book tours, hold workshops, speak at conferences, and plan marketing campaigns - quickly, easily, and fully supported by the platform for both online and offline events.

Our goal is to enable authors to write books and get them into people's hands for less effort and time than ever before. Get on our list so that you can stay in the loop, and will be one of the first to know when these services will be available.