All about your Authorzone

Authorzone @ Wordzworth Book Design & Publishing

Sign-up for one of our publishing or print packages and you will be given access to your Authorzone. Here you can review the details of all your titles in print or publication, place book orders, review sales data, royalties and payments.

Dashboard

Your dashboard is where you go to see any outstanding actions. Think of it as your noticeboard where we will alert you to anything you need to do. You will also be notified of these items in an email as well but this is a helpful place to see any actions you need to take collected together in one place.

Entering metadata

When you publish a new title you will be prompted on the dashboard to go and enter a few pieces of essential book metadata in your Authorzone account.

Title

Some of these details may be pre-populated but it is important to check you are entirely happy with how everything appears before the data is sent out to retailers.

Title as shown on the book cover, should be same for all formats
Subtitle if there is one on the cover (optional)
Language in which the title is printed e.g. English, French
Edition No. if left empty will be set as 1 (optional)
Imprint will be populated with your Wordzworth Publishing or your publisher name

Contributors

You should include the names of everyone involved with your book here and credit them all properly along with their roles. Each contributor should be added as Author, Illustrator, Editor etc. The author should be entered first and all names should be entered consistently (e.g. middle initials included or not).

Production

This information was set before your book was designed and is just included again here for your reference and confirmation. Production details including color, binding, paper, laminate, trim and page count. These are the specs your book files have been designed to.

Distribution

Here you will make three key sales decisions. This data will then be pushed out to the distributor so it is important to set these carefully.

Publication date is the when your book will be made available to retailers. If set in the future your launch will be delayed until this date. If in doubt, just make it today.

List price is the price you suggest to retailers, for details see how to price your book.  Remember, this is just a recommended price and retailers may choose to list higher or lower. Most retailers recommend ending with .99 in all currencies. Books will not be sold in locations where a price is not set.

Wholesale discount is used to incentivize a retailer to list your book as it determines how much money they make from selling it. However, you can see from the author royalty numbers the higher the discount, the lower your royalties, so it really is a trade-off. There’s no magic number but we would recommend a minimum discount of 35%.

Classification

This information guides readers and search engines and essentially tells them what your book is about and who it is for. They are used differently by each retailer so it’s best to complete them all as best as you can.

Audience codes indicate the most appropriate readers for your book. As a tip, you cannot combine juvenile and adult codes for the same title. So, select your audience and then choose the most appropriate classification codes.

BISAC codes are shown in this list.  They should be selected to best reflect the content and be as specific as possible, “general” codes are pretty useless. You should select the same codes for the book and ebook formats.

BIC codes are very similar to BISAC codes but just a slightly different classification. You will need to select two codes from this list as well.

Description

Entering a good synopsis of your book will be used by retailers to show prospective customers. Try to use straightforward language and consumer-friendly terms. This text will also drive search engine optimization so use words that are important to your content. This can be 200-4000 characters but the optimal length is around 1500.

About the author

Finally please provide a description of the author. This can be 200-4000 characters but the optimal length is around 1500. You may want to include short biography similar to that used on your cover and perhaps a mention of relevant prior work, location and any affiliations.

Updating metadata

If later, once your book has gone into distribution, you want to change the list price of your book please email to contact@wordzworth.com and we will update these for you. However, please note that Ingram push out updated price information to retailers on 1st of each month and any new prices must be submitted 7 days prior. This means there can potentially be a delay of up to 4 weeks for any new prices to be displayed on third-party websites and your old pricing will continue to be displayed in the meantime.

Book details

Go to your bookshelf to see further information on any of your existing titles. Select the arrow on the left of any book to view its full details including title, print production details, pricing, classification and the book and author summaries.

 

Book orders

To order copies of your book at cost price simply go to your bookshelf and click the order copies button next to the book you wish to buy:

  • You will be sent to an order page for your delivery address, print and shipping options
  • Then you will be redirected to PayPal to make payment for your order
  • Within 24 hours you will get an order confirmation email
  • When your books are on their way you will be sent a tracking ID for delivery

Book sales

New book sales data is collected from our book distributors around the 10th of each month and should be shown here around the 15th of each month. Book sales data also takes at least one month to filter through from the various retailers and be shown in your Authorzone. The default view will display sales over the last year. To see a different data range, simply choose a from and to date and press apply.

To see further details on each sale, click the arrow on the left of any row. Data is available for you to either view online or download in .csv or .pdf format for your own records. All sales information is aggregated. Major retailers such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble will typically be itemised while sales via smaller retailers are collectively referred to as sales via Ingram Books.

Royalty payments

Visit the payments tab of your account to see details of your quotations, invoices and royalty payments.

We pay you 100% of your royalties on the 15th of each month. However, there is an initial four month delay in receiving your first royalty payment. This is industry-standard for all book sales as it takes time to collect money from individual retailers. Where the balance is less than $20 USD/£15 GBP/$30 AUD then payment will roll to the following month.

All royalties are paid via PayPal directly to your email address. Royalties you earn on a book sale will be displayed in each currency accordingly.