The author of this book, Peter Hupalo, self-published his first book, Thinking Like An Entrepreneur in 1999, thus beginning his company, HCM Publishing. This book appears to be the second book he has self-published, though he does not mention how many books by other authors he has published. I found this book relatively educational in that I think it would be useful, though by no means comprehensive, for a new small publisher. It is very heavy on numbers, spending most of the book discussing how to make a profit, pricing, taxes, and accounting issues. Unfortunately, most of the non-number information is common sense and rather brief.
[...] Hupalo also highly recommends taking a double-entry accounting class in order to learn how to keep debits and credits ledgers. A small publisher should also record all other sources of income, even if they are totally unrelated to the business, in case of an IRS audit. The final section, entitled Holy Grail of Publishing” covers a range of financial aspects, including trademarks, copyrights, series, annuity valuation, how to estimate author advances and revenue streams, the importance of a backlist, and how to remainder books that perform really poorly in order to get a tax write-off. [...]
[...] He then recommends printing extra covers or jackets as promos and spares, and discusses the money-savings uses of using Pantone colors and tints of Pantones for a book cover. He also discusses other color issues, such as monitor calibration and color associations and meanings. Lastly, he tells how to get an ISBN and bar code for a book. The next-to-last section is on record keeping. Hupalo advises new publishers to keep all documents and organize them well. Computer records should be regularly backed up, and information from documents should be transferred to ledgers. [...]
[...] Unless you only publish your own books and don't employ anyone beyond family, then you can be a sole proprietor, which means that you and your company are basically inseparable. If you choose to be a sole proprietorship, you file your personal taxes plus self- employment forms Schedule C and Schedule SE. Hupalo gives the names of various helpful IRS publications to refer to for more information about taxes, etc. As a sole proprietorship, you can have name your which then becomes a DBA, which stands for “doing business For instance, I could be Jamie Kerry DBA Twilight Books. [...]
[...] He then discusses how to choose an effective title for your book by keeping in mind keywords so that your book will be pulled up by searches. He lists word-of-mouth and newspapers as good publicity outlets, as is Amazon.com's Listmania and reader reviews. He also recommends sending out promotional copies to reviewers and preparing press releases. This section is not incredibly helpful because it is so nonspecific. Hupalo is much more in his element in the next section, on book pricing. [...]
[...] Hupalo recommends creating an aging schedule, which keeps track of how much each company owes you and how overdue they are, and adopting a policy of prepayment for any future orders placed by a company with a certain overdue level. It is best to be diligent about reminding companies to pay on time because sometimes mid-size distributors do go bankrupt and leave unpaid bills, which are likely to never be paid. For this reason, it is also important to include a clause on consignment in your contracts with distributors specifying that books in their inventory are still owned by you. [...]
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