Services

ACW Press works in cooperation with STL Distributors to create availability for your book. STL is the American subsidiary of Send the Light, Ltd. (STL UK), the largest English language Christian distributor in Europe. The mission of STL UK is to "Advance the Christian faith through the creation, distribution and retailing of Christian resources." They are based in Waynesboro, Georgia.

• STL helps to make your book available to as wide an audience as possible through an 800# order line, warehouse fulfillment, and a team of sales representatives. We will attempt to place every book that is a part of this program with Spring Arbor/Ingram Distributors, Amazon.com, and BarnesandNoble.com. (Note that there is no guarantee that every outlet will stock or even list your finished book. We can't force a store or a distributor to carry a title.)

• Through STL we have a team of national field sales representatives who take the STL catalog into every major independent Christian bookstore in the country. In addition, STL has a team of sales representatives who call on the major chain outlets like Berean Christian Stores, LifeWay, Family Christian Stores, Mardel's and also calls on the major trade chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble. This is an incredibly valuable service.

• STL takes and processes credit card sales.

If possible, the 800# should be placed on the inside of your book to encourage further orders. And it is the number you should give out whenever you are doing any type of media interview.

• All orders are shipped within 48-72 hours.

• Through our arrangement with Spring Arbor/Ingram Distributors your book will be a part of the inventory and database of the largest wholesale distributor in the U.S. This means that your book will be available through special order to any bookstore in the country.

• Your book will be available on the Internet through the major e-commerce bookstores such as Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com (we cannot guarantee their listing in a "timely" fashion because of the sheer numbers of books these places deal with, but we have had good success in getting books on these sites consistently. Other sites are not always as cooperative like christianbook.com or bamm.com or buy.com.

• The author may attend any one of the American Christian Writers conferences (excluding Mentoring Retreat and Caribbean Cruise) with the tuition waived and may display and sell his/her book(s) in the conference bookstore at no charge.

• The author will receive one free ad in the Christian Communicator, the only monthly magazine for Christian writers and speakers.

Your costs

You must provide us with a 65% discount off the retail price to create enough profit to pay for the services STL provides.

If you are wondering what happens to that money, consider that Faith Works must give Spring Arbor/Ingram Distributors a 50-55% discount off the retail price. They must give the bookstore a 40-45% discount off the retail price. Thus STL provides order taking, shipping, handling, billing, collections, inventory management, sales representation, sales commissions, returns, etc. for a very small fraction of the 65% discount you provide to them. ACW Press receives nothing (zero) as a part of this arrangement. [see below for some guidelines on setting the retail price of your book]

A $10.00 retail price example: Since your discount to STL is 65 percent off the retail price, on a $10.00 book your total revenue would be $3.50.

A $12.99 retail price example: Since your discount to STL is 65 percent off the retail price, on a $12.00 book your total revenue would be $4.55.

*Due to the discounts that must be given we recommend that you carefully consider the ramifications of our fulfillment and marketing services unless you have a large enough profit margin built into your retail price. Unless you carefully price your book, your total revenue could potentially be less than what you paid to have the book packaged and printed.

You must pay $.015 (one and a half cents) per book per month for warehouse space. This should be taken into account when you decide how many books you wish to have stored in the STL warehouse

You agree to pay ACW Press $10 per month per title to administrate this account. (Since we must handle all communications, billing and marketing coordination we think this fee is very reasonable.)

You agree to pay the $200 annual expense to have the title maintained in the Ingram Distributors and other electronic databases (this is a charge we must pass on to you). However, if you publish 2,500 or more copies of your book with ACW Press, the first year's fee is waived!

Additional marketing opportunities

Any additional marketing expense is optional.

We also have occasional opportunities to place full page ads in trade magazines like Christian Retailing and Aspiring Retail. This is done on a co-op basis where authors choose whether or not to participate in the ad. Costs can be as much as $900 per book

Unfortunately most of the opportunities sent to us are prohibitive for the author. Some cost as much as $5,000 just to get a 1/8 of a page placement. We chose not to bother the author with these offers because of the expense.

Restrictions

ACW Press does not buy your books.

ACW Press does not act as an advertising or publicity agency.

ACW Press is a service organization.

We operate on a consignment basis only. You will only be paid for books sold through STL.

There are no promises or guarantees of the sale of your book. Just because your book is in print doesn't mean that bookstores will stock it on their shelves or even order it. It is up to the author to generate the interest to drive the readers into the store to find the book and make a purchase.

It is your responsibility to prepay shipping to the STL warehouse in Georgia.

The field sales representatives need occasional free copies to give to key buyers. These will be taken from your warehouse stock. You must agree to allow us to use 40 copies for this purpose. We don't necessarily need all 40, but it gives us a stock from which we can draw when necessary.

STL can warehouse as many books as you wish (within reason), however you will be charged a fee per book per month. After one year's sales history there will be an extra warehouse fee for inventory stored above and beyond a year's supply.

Guidelines for determining the retail price of your book

These suggestions are for 5 1/2 x 8 3/8 trim size paperback books. These are very general guidelines only. Remember to factor in the cost of production, marketing dollars, fulfillment, freight and discounts to bookstores when drawing up your business plan.

  96 - 128 pages -- $11.00 - $14.00

144 - 176 pages -- $14.00 - $17.00

192 - 224 pages -- $16.00 - $20.00

240 - 288 pages -- $18.00 - $22.00

304 - 336 pages -- $21.00 - $24.00

Sometimes the genre determines the price. For instance, fiction is generally priced lower than non-fiction. An academic or textbook type work can have a higher retail price than a general market title.

A hardcover book is generally $5.00 - $7.00 more than the paperback. A 6 x 9 paperback trim size can usually support an extra $1.00-$2.00 in retail price.

The idea is to set a price that is fair and reasonable. You do not want price to be an issue when a buyer is deciding whether or not to purchase your book. But at the same time you cannot afford to under price the book. Plus you do not want to devalue your book with a low retail because it will then be perceived as a "budget" book and thus "must have something wrong with it."

We suggest you go to a bookstore and search for books like yours and then see what the prevailing price ranges are and make your determination from that investigation.