You may not know what it’s called, but you’ve heard it all before.  Some of the best satire originates with a malapropism, the misuse of similar sounding words.  George W. Bush was the king of malapropisms, so much so that the word “bushism” was born.  Dan Quayle was a close second.  There are myriad celebrity malapropisms.  More on this later. 

When I was a young mother I held a job as an assistant in the contract negotiations office for a large organization.

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It seems to happen more and more often.  We receive manuscripts from authors containing materials from third parties.  The majority of the time, the included material is properly cited with appropriate permissions attached.  Sometimes, however, material is embedded in the manuscript without sufficient diligence on the part of the author.

I have asked my good friend and trusted attorney, John Hardin Young, to comment on compliance with basic intellectual property rights as they apply to the independently published author.

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I tell it to our authors all of the time!  It takes three things to be a successful, independently published author:  1.  You have to write a great book!; 2. We have to deliver your book as a professional print and eBook in all channels (We will – count on it!); and 3. The world has to find out about your book.  

Part 1 is up to you.  You need to assess your work, get feedback from others who will be honest with you and help make your work the best it can be.  If you're writing fiction, select a topic to frame your story that is exciting, timely and maybe even controversial.  The recent success of Fifty Shades of Gray proved again that controversy can really sell a lot of books.

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Informed authors choose Telemachus Press. Our authors know we have the best value proposition in the industry. You will make more money and have the lowest total cost working with us than you would with anyone else. That is, of course, unless you plan on selling fewer than 150 books.  Not the objective for a successful author.

So, what would we have to change in order to reduce our price to $499?

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“We Made You Out of Love” - Jeffrey was a happy, content little boy, until the day he stumbled upon the greatest mystery of all…THE STORY OF HIS BIRTH! Now, join him and his family as they travel through Jeffrey’s imagination: battling giant robots, discovering slimy aliens and uncovering magical gingerbread men…all while trying to uncover where it is Jeffrey actually came from. Board-certified pediatrician Dr. Greg Marconi and Michael Marconi have crafted a funny, exciting, and heartwarming story that will give children a satisfying answer to the question: “Where did I come from?” years before they are ready to learn about the facts of life.

Parents who are not ready to get into the nitty gritty details of baby making will like “We Made You Out of Love“. The book gives children ages 3 & up age-appropriate, non-graphic explanations for the never ending stream of questions that tend to begin around pre-school. For younger children the book answers many questions they may have, but not deal with topics they’re not old enough to comprehend. For older children, “We Made You Out of Love” is a great way to broach the subject of reproduction, and it allows individual parents to decide how much or how little of the technical details they feel their child is ready for.

“We Made You Out of Love” is filled with breathtaking artwork, comedic situations and it combines the perfect amount of information and entertainment woven into a truly heartwarming story. “We Made You Out of Love” is the perfect story and learning tool for all families, one that children are going to want to read again and again…for years and years to come.

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Featured in the September/October 2011 of “Selling Power” Magazine, our very own John Locke shares how he made his fortune the old-fashioned way — selling.

“…Fill In a Niche

Today Locke defines success as “having the freedom to do the things that I want to do – like this writing adventure – and to watch this family I now have grow. Being as driven as I was before, I never had the time to draw back and understand what success really was. Success wasn’t owning the most or selling the most or making the most money. Success was enjoying those things with people you care about.”

If something John Locke wanted or tried didn’t work out, his first response was always, “I haven’t done everything I can.” He would come back to the problem time and time again until – like Thomas Edison – the light would come on. And then he would take action to multiply what worked, rather than get stuck in what didn’t.

“With my novels,” says Locke, who penned nine novels over the past two years, “I was selling nothing in the beginning.” He followed what everyone said you had to do, but it was just like his experience with insurance: when the tried and true fails to work, find out what works for you and go for it.

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We get asked a lot of questions by prospective authors. A lot of questions! The questions run the gamut from process to pricing, from fonts to formatting, from Kindles to kerning. They’re all good questions asked by intelligent and curious people – many of them our future friends. We never mind spending whatever time is necessary to fully answer each and every inquiry, each and every question. Just so you know, never hesitate to call or email!

There is one question that not only comes up frequently, it is sometimes even posed in the email introducing the author to us – our very first exchange! The question is: “I already have a cover created. How much will this reduce the fee that you charge?” Well, this is just about the only question we get asked where the answer is maybe not what the author wanted to hear. The answer is, unfortunately, it will not reduce our fee.

How can this be? After all, part of the Telemachus Press fee is the creation of a cover for the eBook or Print-on-Demand book or both. If you show up with a manuscript and a fully developed cover, doesn’t that drastically reduce the workload? Actually, no. Amazingly, no. In fact, it adds to our workload. We have tracked many development efforts and have the actual data to back this up.

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Before you sign up with any self-publishing company, there are several parts of the publishing agreement where you need to take a moment and focus before signing on the dotted line. I’d like to talk about just one of these today: your publishing rights, sometimes included in sections like “The Grant” and “The Territory” or maybe you will find it somewhere else. As a new author you might be moving quickly to get your book published, but just so you know, this is a big one. Slow down.

The contract might reference the fact that you continue to own your copyright, it will always be yours and lead you to believe that this by itself is all the intellectual property protection that you will ever need. In other parts of the contract you will note, if you give the document a careful read, that you might very well be (and almost definitely will be) granting to the self-publishing company your publishing rights. The agreement might vaguely reference “General Publication Rights” in different media and different geographies or it may specifically include “Primary Rights,” “Trade Edition Rights,” “Mass Market Reprint Rights,” “Book Club Rights,” “Transcription Rights,” “Direct Mail Rights,” “Secondary Rights,” “Dramatic Rights,” “Movie Rights,” “Television Rights,” “Foreign Language Rights” and my all time favorite, “All rights not specifically granted herein.” You really need to seek competent legal counsel to understand just what you are giving away. Are you really locking your book up with this company and under their control forever? The implications of this are very, very significant.

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When it comes to money, we hate being surprised by unexpected and unplanned costs. And boy do we hear from angry authors who have been surprised by bait-and-switch artists in self-publishing. We’d be plenty mad, too!

At Telemachus Press, we value our author relationships and pride ourselves in being completely upfront about what it will be like to work with us. We want you to know about all aspects of our upcoming relationship, especially what the actual cost will be to publish your book. Just so you know, there are only three places where you can spend money with us. Only three – no surprises.

The first is our publishing services fee. For eBooks it is $1,495 and for a Print-on-Demand Soft Cover, the fee is $2,495. If you are interested in both eBook and POD, the total fee is $3,795.

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Congratulations to Amy Lewis Faircloth and Joanne Lewis for “Wicked Good” Fiction Drama!

Archer Falcon manages to maintain a successful law practice but in her private life she feels inept, especially when it comes to her adopted son, Rory who has been diagnosed with both bipolar disorder and Asperger’s Syndrome.

Rory is a teenage boy struggling in a world that doesn’t understand him. He is intelligent, witty and creative as he is destructive. Like all teenagers he seeks a sense of belonging and decides that his birth parents might just understand him better.

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