Everyone has a story worth telling. But not every book is worth reading!

If you’ve read self-published novels, you know that many are badly formatted, filled with typos, and fall short in basic grammar and punctuation. I’m not saying that your manuscript fits this description, but many do. It’s distracting, and readers will mention every mistake they find when they review your book.

Plus, a badly written or badly formatted book gives self-publishing a bad name. None of us wants that. We all want to be taken seriously as writers, right?

Almost every experienced author will tell you that you need an editor. A second pair of eyes will find errors you’ve missed, because you’ve read it so many times you can’t see them anymore. And, unless you’re a whiz at Microsoft Word, you’ll probably struggle to format your book so it looks good and meets the requirements of the publishing service.

You can search the internet for a company that has cheap rates, but you never know what you’re getting. Some are good. Some are from other countries where you have no recourse if something goes wrong. And some are flat-out scams. Browse some author groups and read the horror stories! How do you know which companies are which?

Here at Alma James, we’re writers like you. We live in the U.S. (in Virginia, to be more precise, although you’ll notice we have a Utah area code because we lived there for 12 years). And we care. It is our goal to offer you the same quality customer service that we’d like to receive ourselves.

Still want references? Contact us! We’ll put you in touch with some of our clients.

As self-published authors with decades of experience with Microsoft Word, we provide:

• Editing: That second pair of eyes, along with excellent knowledge of grammar and punctuation.
• Formatting: From title pages to page headings, and end notes to bibliographies, we have experience.
• Publishing: Yes, you could try to navigate the publishing sites, but we’ve done it many times. We can save you the headaches.
• Cover Design: Whether you have an image or an idea, or not, we can help.

Publishing: We begin with Amazon’s KDP (formerly CreateSpace). It has no up-front costs, gives instant access to Amazon and Kindle worldwide, distributes to other major retailers, and offers better royalties than many publishing houses. And copies are available to the author (you) at reasonable prices. We also use IngramSpark and other distributors, but there are costs involved to consider.

Copyrights: You, the author, retain all copyrights.

ISBNs: Every book gets a unique identifier, called an ISBN. You can get a free one from Amazon. When anyone looks up the ISBN, it will show Amazon as the publisher. As you can imagine, bookstores that compete with Amazon aren’t crazy about them as a publisher.

You can also buy one from Bowker, the company that maintains the database. But that’s not cheap.

Instead, you can use one of ours. We buy the from Bowker in bulk, so they’re cheaper. And we pass the savings along to you. Your ISBN will show that your book was published by Alma James Publishing– not Amazon.

Marketing: We’re not marketing experts. Few small companies are good at everything (although some claim to be). We’ll help you with the basics, and if you need more we can refer you to a reliable professional.

Royalties: Different booksellers have different payment policies. For example, Amazon and Kindle pay royalties 60 days after the month closes. They pay Alma James (that’s us), the publisher. We pay you within 30 days of when we receive payment, less any percentage you’ve agree to pay us for our services, and any administrative fees or balances due.

Pricing: Because every book and every manuscript is different, we can’t give you a quote for our services without seeing your work. If you’d like a quote, email us the “doc” or “docx” file at dj @ almajamesbooks.com. (Be sure to remove the spaces from the email address. They’re there to prevent spam.)

Whether you use the services of Alma James or not, we wish you well in your writing! Because everyone has a story worth telling.