What’s new (and great!) about the One-Click Non-Fiction Suite

“Have you ever wondered how you’re going to do it all? You’ve looked down your list of things to do: formatting, cover art, copyright registration and editing…not to mention all of the marketing and Ingram distribution once your book has been published – and had that moment of panic. Don’t worry! You can relax! We’ve got you covered with our One-Click Publishing Suites, which include everything you need to make your non-fiction, fiction, children’s book, or spiritual book a success.

Today you can save $500 with this special introductory offer on our new One-Click for Non-Fiction package. One click is all it takes to connect with a team of professionals who will assist you every step of the way. One click is all it takes to get a professional custom cover, professional copy editing, and an enhanced interior. One click is all it takes to sell a high-quality paperback on Barnes & Noble and Amazon and a high-quality e-Book on the Kindle. But don’t wait! This offer is good this week only! Right now, you’re only one click away from achieving your dream of becoming a successfully-published author. Promotion Code: Save500Aug16″

Such is the promotional copy that greets new authors when they explore our new One-Click for Non-Fiction publishing suite this week, and its $500 Introductory Offer. I believe the first paragraph touches upon a common feeling among all authors — an overwhelming sense of … what to call it? … Concern? Anxiety? The jitters? Publishing your first book can seem overwhelming for new authors, and that is why they seek out services likes those offered by Outskirts Press. In our 14 years of industry experience, we have identified a few things that can help make good books great, and professional writers extraordinary. Two of the most necessary components of a fantastic book are professional editing and professional custom cover design. ALL our One-Click Suites include both.

We call them “Suites” because they are a bundle of quality pre-production, production, and marketing services designed exclusively for a particular type of book. At the present time we have launched our New & Improved Outskirts Press with 4 One-Click Suites: Non-Fiction, Fiction, Spiritual Books, and Children’s Books.

For the thousands of authors who have published with one of our a la carte, custom publishing packages (and those have all changed, too — more on that at a later date), the One-Click difference is nothing short of extraordinary. Let me briefly walk you through the publishing process of both, starting with the custom, a la carte package first:

Order an a la carte custom publishing package (let’s say, the Ultimate).
Select your format(s)
Select your trim size(s)
Select your interior formatting option
Select your interior production options
Select your cover option
Enter your summary, author biography, sales annotation, cover copy
Set your price plan
Set your retail price
Select your marketing options
You’re done. Sit back and relax while we go to work.

All that customization is great, and some of our authors THRIVE on the degree of flexibility and choice we give them. But making decisions can slow the process down and allow for some important ingredients to be opted-out-of (like editing, or custom cover design, or marketing services).

In comparison, here is the publishing process for the One-Click Non-Fiction Suite:

Order a One-Click Suite (let’s say, the Non-Fiction)
You’re done. Sit back and relax while we go to work.

No long lists of trim sizes to fret over. No price plans and trade discounts to worry about. No cover themes, interchangeable image libraries, or concern about selecting the correct production & marketing options. That’s because the One-Click Non-Fiction package already includes everything a professional non-fiction writer needs to publish the non-fiction book of his or her dreams (and significantly increase the chances for its success, and its success in book contests).

What’s it include? And why is it important? This is a long list, but if you’re thinking of making an investment into your non-fiction book, it’s one worth reading.

A 6×9 paperback. All our One-Click Non-Fiction authors have ultimate control over the trim size of their book, but the default size for this publishing suite is 6×9 so the majority of our clients don’t need to worry about nuances like choosing between 30 different size/format combinations (some of which have “whiter” paper or “thinner” paper. Yikes! We just make it EASY for them. Can they add a hardback edition? Of course.
Professional copy editing. All of our One-Click Suites include a professional-grade edit by a professional, human editor. Automatic grammar checks and spellchecks are great, and should always be a first step for any manuscript submission, but there is simply no substitute for a pair of highly-trained eyes. More than 80% of our non-fiction books are 75,000 words or less, so that is the word count that is included for free. If a non-fiction book is longer than 75,000 words, the author simply pays the difference (at a per-word price that is less than just about all our competitors).
Professional custom cover design. All of our One-Click Suites include an original, custom-designed cover by a professional cover designer, all of whom have a decade or more of cover-design experience. Our One-Click clients can describe their vision for their cover, or leave it up to the designer’s best artistic interpretation of the manuscript. In either case, the designer will present TWO different concepts for the author to choose from. Sometimes, BOTH the concepts are so good that the author has a hard time selecting. Talk about an embarrassment of riches (which, in fact, describes this whole package). Fortunately, we have a solution for that “problem” too. It’s just a little bit of market research we make available for all our authors, and you can see an example of how it works on our Outskirts Press blog here.

Before I continue, I will say that copy editing and custom cover design are so important, they are mandatory components of our Best Book of the Year Awards, and our EVVY Nominees. Since we KNOW all our One-Click suites include both professional editing and professional custom cover design, all One-Click packages are automatically eligible for both contests. Speaking of which, our 16 EVVY Award Finalists were just announced, and you can see them here. Winning an EVVY Award is a prerequisite to winning our Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year Award (and its $1,500 Grand Prize).

Enhanced book formatting. Don’t get me wrong; our standard interior book formatting still runs circles around most publishers — but for that extra “wow factor” the Enhanced Upgrade can sometimes make the difference between a successful book and an award-winning successful book. This upgrade is included with the One-Click Non-Fiction suite, once again making things easy for the client to get the best book possible.
Expedited service. When you publish as many books a year as we do (roughly 1,600 annually), and apply so much time and attention to each one, a math major could identify a potential problem with that business model. It’s true. We love our books, and we are passionate about making them the best they can be. That takes time. So all our One-Click clients “jump to the front of the line” so to speak.
ISBN & Barcode. It almost goes without saying at this point in the self-publishing community, but of course all our packages, including the One-Click Suites, include an ISBN and a barcode, both mandatory ingredients for an actual book (and ingredients that many DIY e-books from DIY places still don’t bother with). That’s like making a hamburger without the … hamburger. It doesn’t even count as a book. But, the One-Click Non-Fiction package goes one step further by offering the client the free option of publishing under his/her own private ISBN (instead of ours). Some clients care about this sort of thing; others don’t. The One-Click Non-Fiction suite accommodates both, and it is included.
Official copyright registration, Library of Congress filing (including LOC #), and Books-in-Print registration. Nothing exciting here. Just some basic administrative elements required by “real” published books. We handle all these administrative details for our One-Click Non-Fiction authors as a standard practice so they don’t have to worry about it.
Book publishing tip sheets. One of the increased values introduced by all our new services as of August 1 are a collection of articles, best practices, and whitepapers all designed to help authors publish the best book possible. What makes a great author photo? What makes a great book title? What are some common do’s and don’ts for proper manuscript submission? The free book publishing tip sheets answer all these questions for all our authors, and they’re all free and included.
The Book Marketing RoadMap. On the other end of the production cycle from the publishing tip sheets comes the marketing road maps. These guides and blueprints for successfully, efficiently, and effectively marketing a book are included for all our new authors as of August 1 with our new packages. What are the best book contests to enter? How do you successfully navigate the social media waters? What are the best 15 marketing tactics to pursue, and why? These are just some of the compelling questions answered by the Book Marketing RoadMap for all our clients.
The Marketing COACH(tm). Yes, that is actually trademarked, if you can believe it, because only Outskirts Press offers Creative, Consistent, Assistance, Coaching, and Help to all our authors for years after publication. COACH is a clever acronym, yes, but it’s also a clever program (pun intended). Our software automatically delivers all our first-time published authors a veritable treasure trove of marketing advice, suggestions, marketing options, promotions, discounts, and tips via an “email drip” system for days, weeks, months, and years after publication. No other self-publishing service provider offers anything like it, and the proof is in the pudding. — Which is another way to say Ingram Wholesalers and its POD distribution representatives have personally called me on several occasions to remark on how impressive our wholesale book sales numbers are compared with our competitors. They literally ask what we’re doing differently. “It’s because we are passionate about helping our authors market and sell their books after they are published,” always sounds like a better answer than: “The Marketing COACH.” Actually, both statements are true.
Custom Press Release and Public Relations Campaign. You can’t publish a top-notch, professional non-fiction book without telling the world about it, can you? Well, you can, but you shouldn’t. And the One-Click Non-Fiction package ensures that the world knows, with press release campaigns, PR publicist campaigns, hot leads follow-up, electronic clipping services, and global news wire notifications.
Amazon “stuff.” We all know Amazon is the world’s largest retailer (yep, they overtook Wal-Mart), and they’ve been the world’s largest bookseller for even longer. When I mentioned that the “Marketing COACH” was what we do differently, I could also mention all the attention we focus on Amazon. I wrote a little book titled Sell Your Book on Amazon, so I know a thing or two about it, and I make sure our marketing support personnel, as well as our authors, know how to “work Amazon”. We make sure our One-Click Non-Fiction books are redesigned for the Kindle e-book reading devices and submitted for distribution on Amazon’s Kindle platform. We make sure their hard copy book is in Amazon’s “Look Inside” program because of the benefits that creates for the Amazon search algorithm. We make sure their annotation and summary and sales page are top-notch. You know, all that stuff every self-publishing author should do for every book they publish. We do it for our One-Click authors.
Oh, and we also include their books in the Google Books Preview.
And we also submit 10 hard copy books and 10 pitch packets to 10 book reviewers to solicit book reviews, blurbs, and testimonials.
And we also create an original, awesome 60-90 second book video trailer and then share that video on Facebook and upload it to our YouTube channel and provide it to the author for further distribution.
And we also give the author a responsive, social media-integrated Author Webpage (like the one you saw for my book, if you happened to click that cover up there). Their book video trailer appears in the Media Section, along with an audio excerpt the author can choose to record, if he/she so wishes (it’s included, but entirely optional).

Whew. As if that wasn’t long enough, as a reward for reading this much, here are some “hidden benefits” that come with the One-Click Non-Fiction package. We don’t really promote these, per se, but I know how the website is programmed, so it’s also true that:

All One-Click Non-Fiction books appear in the “Browse” section of our online bookstore. We only showcase great-looking books here, and all One-Click books look great!
We subsidize shipping costs with One-Click clients. Shipping fees can add up for authors, especially if they are ordering a lot of author’s copies to pursue marketing efforts. We want to encourage all our One-Click clients to participate in those important marketing steps, so we share some of the shipping burden with them. For example, the approximate shipping cost for fifty 200-page books within the continental United States for an Economy client might cost about $35 or so (70 cents each). That same shipment might cost about $25 or so for the One-Click client (50 cents each). Saving 20 cents for each book shipped might not sound like much until you order 1500 and save $300.
Another perk for ALL our authors, including the One-Click clients, is that we do not charge sales tax on author’s copies they order themselves. Most of our largest competitors do. That’s another 4-8% you’re saving on every book order.
We have some other perks for One-Click clients being added to our post-publication departments, but they’re still in development (since we just relaunched everything 2 days ago!), so it’s too early to reveal details. But I will in the future.

There you have it. The One-Click Non-Fiction Suite from Outskirts Press. Publish your passion.