Yes. You own the copyright and all print and reproduction rights. You can do anything you want with your book.

There are three goals of the marketing that’s included in the PortableVoices All-Inclusive Publishing package.

We will manage the logistics to run a Campaign that focuses on maximizing early sales, reviews, and rankings, all to build the foundation of early credibility for your book’s long term success.

We will also support you in promoting the book to your connections by creating social media graphics for the book, crafting a book announcement email, gifting free copies to your friends and family, and creating a strategy for you to get the support of influencers who you know.

By the end of the first week of your book release, your book should have a burst of early sales, a baseline of reviews, awareness among your network, and you should have a plan for how to continue to leverage it going forward.

In addition to your First Week Promotions, you will receive a Digital Launch toolkit that includes a book landing page, an email campaign created for your target audience, and a full media kit.

We do offer other add-on marketing packages as well.

Your book cover and manuscript interior layout will be designed by professional designers, but you have full creative control.

We don’t charge you anything for copies. You get to buy copies at the print cost. At any time after the book is published, you can order copies in any quantities you’d like at this discounted price, direct from the printer (we don’t make money on copies).

Yes and no. This is a complicated answer, again because the publishing business is so weird.

Yes, we make your book available for order and sale in bookstores and retail outlets.

No, we do not automatically put your book in bookstores. This is because bookstores carry very few books, reserving their limited space for established authors or books from publishers who are paying for shelf space.

You generally need to sell at least 25,000 copies before bookstores become interested in carrying your book. That’s the bad news. The good news is that being in bookstores doesn’t really matter anymore. A book sitting on a shelf doesn’t sell in most cases. In terms of buyer behavior, most people who shop at bookstores also shop on Amazon or Jumia, so if they don’t see a book at the bookstore, they’ll just go to Amazon or Jumia. In other words, lack of bookstore distribution in and of itself doesn’t necessarily lose you very many sales.

The reality is, for almost all authors, being in a bookstore is purely about ego, and not about actual ROI. We don’t deny that going into a bookstore and seeing your book on the shelf is nice, but having a book in a bookstore does almost nothing in terms of sales or awareness. It is only a status object.

No, it actually does the opposite. The best strategy to get a great book for you is to use the service-based model, where we are paid a fee and you own all rights and all royalties.

This is because under a service-based model we get paid for ensuring that your book serves your goals (such as getting speaking gigs or finding clients or creating influence), as opposed to a royalty-based model, where we are incentivized to focus only on selling copies (regardless of whether it serves your goals).

You own 100% of the royalties for your book.

Although PortableVoices doesn’t take any share of the book’s profits, there are some costs that don’t go directly in your pocket—namely, Amazon’s fees and printing costs.

For eBooks, Amazon takes 30% of your royalties and you take the other 70%. For paperbacks, Amazon takes 40% of the royalties, the printer gets approximately $3 to print the book, and the rest is yours. If you do hardcover, we’ll explain it all before you make any decisions.

The published work shall bear PortableVoices’ logo on the front or/and back cover. You don’t have to use our imprint as your publisher. We can essentially create a new publishing company for you with any name you like. It’s completely up to you who the named publisher of the book is.

Yes. We take absolutely no money from the sale of your book, and all accounts are set up in your name and under your ownership.