First and foremost, we’re a listening company. We’re focused on building a self-publishing option that works for authors. We’ve tried to identify all the things about self publishing that don’t work for authors, and build solutions that will work. You should read our guide to the hidden hazards of self publishing to learn more about those challenges. We’re committed to working with Christian authors and organizations; you can count on our team of believers to be working with you and for you to create the best product possible.

While every book is different, there are some basic building blocks that make up a publishing project:

-Editorial

-Legalities (ISBN, Barcode, Copyright registration, Catalog in Publication)

-Typesetting / page design

-Cover design

-Distribution

-Marketing/PR -Printing

-Sales

Every title will need a decision made in each of these areas – even if the decision is “No, I don’t want to spend time / energy / money on that right now.” The natural starting place for most projects is with the editorial process – getting your content as sharp as it can be. Since there are minor charges for making changes to your typeset book, and major charges for making a change once you’re looking at a press proof, the editorial stage is the time to hone your writing.

This really varies depending on the project and the services that you as the publisher need to acquire for your book. If all you need is book printing, that can be 2-4 weeks (longer for a hard cover or full color book). If you need a full suite of publishing services, you can be looking at anywhere from 3-6 months or longer.

You can, as long as you can supply the file in a format ready for the press. You can find our detailed press-ready guidelines HERE, but the basics are that you need to be able to provide the complete cover (front cover, spine, and back cover) as a single file (PDF format), designed to the right size, in the CMYK color-space, and with all fonts embedded. The artwork needs to be high resolution (at least 300 pixels per inch). If that sounds really complex, you’re probably better off getting your cover design from BelieversPress.

Well, for one, you don’t have to worry about all that technical gobbledygook at the end of the last question. More importantly, designing a book cover involves a lot more than just grabbing a piece of artwork, slapping a title on it, and saving the result. A professional designer is trained for things like how to place elements for maximum impact, how to draw a reader’s eye, how to reach certain demographics. They are familiar with the trends in the industry, and they work to create a cover that doesn’t just suit the book, but actually helps it to reach its audience.

We do, but full color products are cost-effective only when the quantities become great enough that it makes economic sense to outsource the production to China or India. We’ll gladly get some quotes for you if you have a particular product in mind, but since full color production is not very cost-effective, you may have a hard time developing a plan for publishing your book that doesn’t lose money.

We do – BelieversPress is proud to be able to connect authors with the same editors, designers, printers, marketers, and PR reps that large CBA houses use. Our editorial team has experience with houses like Strang, Zondervan, Bethany House Publishers, Thomas Nelson, and more.

BelieversPress believes in making you the publisher. Your book needs an ISBN if you intend to sell it through retail establishments. If that’s part of your plan, then you can acquire an ISBN through us. As an authorized reseller for R.R. Bowker (the United States ISBN agency), we make sure that your ISBN is registered to you, not us.

We encourage you to register your copyright. Since it can be done online directly with the United States Copyright office (www.copyright.gov) for a fee of $35, we haven’t seen a demand to find or build a service that registers on your behalf. If you have trouble with www.copyright.gov, let us know and we’ll help you to navigate it.

The LCCN program is only open to publishers who publish three titles or more, so you may or may not be eligible for that program. You can, however, hire a cataloging company to do publishers Catalog-In-Publiciation info, if you feel it would be helpful to have cataloging info on your copyright page.

It’s almost impossible to stay current with this answer! Right now, the two most common formats are ePub (Used on the Nook, iPad, and more) and Mobipocket (used in Amazon’s Kindle store). There are other formats out there, from ePDF (optimated for on-screen reading) to Microsoft Reader’s .LIT format, to Palm’s PDB format. And there are others just beginning to percolate through the industry.

eBook sales are one of the fastest growing areas in publishing. eBooks don’t ever tear, have binding issues, or discolor from prolonged exposure to the sun (well… your eReader might, but, we digress). They don’t have to be warehoused, they are portable, and if you lose your book, well, you just download it again from your account. eBooks are just plain convenient. They offer you, as the publisher, an additional avenue for sales and marketing.

Print on Demand refers to a technology used to print and bind a single copy of a book at a time. Some publishers use POD as a method to maintain a book’s availability without maintaining inventory. Some publishers have gone to only ever producing books print-on-demand. You have to determine which method fits your needs better. Print on Demand is attractive because it doesn’t require any up-front investment in inventory, but you trade off the lower unit cost of books produced in larger quantities for that convenience.

BelieversPress is a solutions company rather than a printer. That means that we use the process that best fits your needs. If Print on Demand best suits your needs, we’ll get your book into production in our Print on Demand system. If it makes more sense to print smaller quantities in batches, we’ll get your book into production in our digital book printing plant. If going with a larger print run on offset lithographic presses makes sense because you’ll need a large number of copies as cost-effectively as possible, then we’ll get your books into production in our offset plant. Don’t even need physical books? We’ll work with you on your eBook. And at BelieversPress, we’ll help you to navigate those waters and to know when to make the switch from POD to Digital to Litho and back.

Our parent company was created to serve Christian authors and ministries who have a vision to author and distribute the message that God has given them to a world that needs that message. Because we are a Christian owned and managed company, we are stringent as to the message and content of the work that we agree to produce. Therefore we ask that you review and agree to the statement of faith and indicate by your signature of this agreement that the content and message of the project you are submitting to Bethany Press does not conflict with this statement of Faith, nor is the project defamatory or destructive of individuals or Christian denominations. BelieversPress reserves that right to cease production at any time on any project that we deem to be in opposition to these guidelines, or this Statement of Faith and will be responsible financially only to pro rate the project based on our existing investment.

Click here to view our Statement of Faith

BelieversPress is a division of Bethany Press International. Bethany Press prints approximately 30% of the best-selling Christian books in the market. With an annual output of about 25 million copies, the chances are that if you’ve got books from major Christian publishers on your shelf, we may have printed it!

No! With Print On Demand technology, you can print literally one book at a time. There’s no maximum either, if you need millions, we can work with you on that as well. It just might take a little while longer than that single copy.

Of course! At each step in your publishing project, you’ll have the opportunity to review the results electronically. Additionally, BelieversPress is standardized on electronic proofs – that is, we send a PDF of the final output of the book before we print anything. We can do printed proofs as well, but we do charge $75 for materials and overnight shipping.

It really depends on the quantity you’re looking at: from complete, press ready files, we can do up to 250 perfect bound (paperback) copies in 8-10 business days, 250 – 500 copies in 10-12 business days, 500 – 750 copies in 12 or so business days, and 750 or more copies in about 15 business days. Hard cover and/or full color books usually take 4-6 weeks to produce. None of those times include time for shipping.

Whatever works best for you. You can call us at 800.341.4192, email us at info@believerspress.com, fax us at 952.236.6682, send carrier pigeons to BelieversPress, 6820 West 115th Street, Bloomington, MN 55438. If you want to send your private jet to pick us up, we’ll take that too.

For books in the POD system, we ship them to wherever the order comes from. If you place the order, we ship it to you. If a customer orders it, we ship it to them.

If your book is being produced in either our digital or litho plant, we include the handling of up to 3 drop ship locations (freight costs additional). If you need to ship to more locations than that, we add $25 for handling for each additional location. We’ll get quotes from the most cost effective providers we can find, and charge you based on the best quotes.

We use UPS for smaller shipments, and a network of LTL (less-than-truckload) trucking companies for larger shipments. If your book is being produced in either our digital or litho plant, we include the handling of up to 3 drop ship locations (freight costs additional). If you need to ship to more locations than that, we add $25 for handling for each additional location. We’ll get quotes from the most cost effective providers we can find, and charge you based on the best quotes.

If you need us to, we can. It just means packing your boxes into our subcompact and taking them to the post office. But we like you, a lot.

Get in touch with us. Of course, if we’re doing our jobs right, you should never be asking this question. BelieversPress answers emails and voicemails within the same business day, so you’ll hear back from us.

Yep! At BelieversPress, we’re not interested in taking your hard work from you. Everything we do is a work for hire. It’s all yours.

By signing up for distribution services, you’re engaging the distributor to make your book available through their network. Depending on whether you’re in the POD production system or printing your books in larger quantities from time to time, books are either printed as orders come in or you ship some of your books to the warehouse as they need copies. Distribution is great because it provides availability for your book, but it’s no silver bullet. You need a marketing plan and a sustained marketing effort or bookstores, retailers, and most importantly readers, won’t know that your book exists.

We work with Anchor Distributors.

No. They’ll make the book available, and they offer opportunities to buy ad space in catalogs, email blasts, and the like, but promoting your book is up to you.

You have to start by figuring out who your target audience is. If your answer is “Everyone” or “Every Christian,” then you don’t have a target audience and you need to start over. Your target audience needs to be a well-defined part of the population that is identifiable by certain traits. Once you identify your target audience, it’s time to put together a plan. Here are some questions to ask yourself about your target audience.

- What are they reading?

- What are their other interests?

- Where are they most likely to buy a book?

- Who do they listen to when it comes to book recommendations?

- Are they already gathered somewhere online? Where?

- What magazines / newspapers / resources do they regularly consume?

- If you could secure one endorsement, who would have the most impact?

- If you could advertise in only one place, what would be most successful?

Answering these questions will help you to begin developing your marketing plan.

Yesterday. Really, it’s never too soon to start marketing a book. This should be a function of your marketing plan, but you should be doing anything (and everything) you can do to create excitement for your book launch.

If your target audience is active in social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc,) then you need to be finding ways to participate in the dialogue they’re having there. Don’t try to force it – they’ll know. Just participate. Be there. Be talking about the things that are important to you. Those are usually the things your book is about – great how that works out, isn’t it?

If you don’t opt for distribution, your book is available where you arrange for it to be. If you do opt for distribution, it’ll be available through Amazon, Barnesandnoble.com, the Ingram database, any of Anchor Distributor’s customers, and through the BelieversPress store.

Only if you create a marketing plan that generates enough buzz for bookstores to feel the need to stock it. Many publishers buy space in bookstores – this makes it harder for books to land on shelves organically.

If you opt to add distribution services, it will.

The chances of getting a book for sale in Walmart stores are very small. Walmart carries a relatively small selection of books, usually based on favorable deals worked out with publishers for titles that are sure to be hot sellers. While Anchor has experience working to place titles with Walmart, the chances of it happening for your title are very small. Of course, the real question to be asking yourself is, What’s the best place to find a large number of my target audience gathered? Walmart is probably not the best answer to that question.