Author Services

Publishing with Gatsby’s Light

Gatsby’s Light publishes both fiction and non-fiction books in print and in multiple eBook formats. The process of publishing a book is a costly, time-consuming, and labor-intensive endeavor. But at Gatsby’s Light, we can see your project from an unedited manuscript to an active record Amazon.com quickly and professionally so that you can devote your efforts to what you really love, writing.

Publishing with Gatsby’s Light is a non-traditional process. The publishing industry is currently undergoing a radical transformation. The old way of doing things has proven itself ineffective in today’s technology-driven world. Fewer and fewer people are physically walking into bookstores to purchase books. One need only look to the closing of Borders Books as evidence of this trend. Therefore, the days of mega-corporation publishers in Manhattan purchasing rights from authors, investing thousands (if not millions) of dollars in production and advertising costs, and then shipping out massive runs of books are quickly coming to an end. This old paradigm hinges on the unlikely scenario that a consumer will stumble across your book in a bookstore and make that purchase. However, unless you are a celebrity author, your book will not be positioned on a front kiosk because major New York publishers effectively buy those spaces for their “darlings.” New authors are almost never “darlings.” If your book makes it into the bookstores today, the one or two copies they each have will be shelved in the appropriate section spine-out. This makes your chances of getting noticed very slim. When you couple this with extremely low royalty rates (less than 10%), the requirement to take returns, the profound cost involved with printing and shipping large runs of books, and the fact that fewer and fewer people are actually reading books these days, it is easy to see that this old publishing model is unsustainable at best.

At Gatsby’s Light, we use innovative print-on-demand technology to reduce publication costs and increase revenue. If an author at a major New York publisher receives a 10% royalty, he or she is doing extremely well. At Gatsby’s Light, authors receive 70% of the cover price minus printing costs. Books published by Gatsby’s Light are listed in the Ingram book distributor catalog, which means that if one of the major book stores want to stock your book, all they have to do is order it through their normal distributor (Ingram). But, in a general sense, Gatsby’s Light books do not collect dust and lose money on bookstore shelves.

When you publish with Gatsby’s Light, your book will be available through Amazon.com, BarnsandNoble.com, Kindle, iTunes, iBooks, and Nook. With print on demand technology, a new book is manufactured each time an order is placed. The book is printed and shipped to the customer so quickly that his experience is exactly the same as if he had ordered a warehoused book from a major press.

As a subsidy press, our business model is simple: We open the door to publication for talented authors whose work does not fit the mass-market ultra-commercial litmus test of big New York publishers. Our authors enjoy extremely high royalties and exercise great control over almost every aspect of the publishing process. Additionally, one of our first concerns at Gatsby’s Light is to produce quality products. It is for this reason that we use professional editors to edit your manuscript and professional cover artists to produce your cover. It is also for this reason that we cannot accept all of the manuscripts we receive for publication. Don’t let this dissuade you, however. We would love to see your work.

If you are interested in publishing with Gatsby’s Light, please visit our Submissions page.

Book Publishing

If you wish to publish with Gatsby’s Light, please submit your work for review in accordance with the requirements on our Submissions page. Before you submit, please review the details of our standard publishing package. We strive to review all submissions and reply within one week. If the decision is favorable, we can get started immediately.

Standard Publishing Package

Gatsby’s Light will see your project from an unedited manuscript to an active record on Amazon.com (and elsewhere). Our standard book publishing package includes the following services:

Professional Editing (Content and Proofreading)
Book Format, Design, and Pricing Consultation
Copy Editing (Interior design, typesetting, layout, and formatting in Adobe InDesign CS5)
ISBN Purchase and Assignment
ISBN and Book Record Registration (Bowker.com)
Cover Image Consultation (see “Cover Design” below)
Electronic File Formatting for POD services
Proof Copy Generation and Consultation (You will receive a proof copy for review and acceptance.)
Submission to US Copyright Office (For copyright protection and Library of Congress record number)
Publication with Our Imprint – Gatsby’s Light Publications, Austin, Texas
Submission to Amazon.com and BarnsandNoble.com
Amazon.com “Author Central” Account Creation
Amazon.com “Search Inside” File Conversion and Submission
eBook File Conversion (.mobi & .epub)
eBook Publication (Amazon Kindle, Barns & Noble Nook, iTunes, and Apple iBooks)
Author Website Consultation
70% Royalties (After Printing & eBook Costs – Paid quarterly: Jan, April, July, October )

Additional Formats

The above services cover one format (i.e. hardcover or paperback). However, Gatsby’s Light can publish your book in any number of additional formats according to your preference.

Cover Design

Readers do judge books by their covers. Without a great cover, readers’ eyes may never find their way to the actual words you have written. As such, a book’s cover is perhaps its most important and often its most expensive feature. Unlike publishing with major presses, at Gatsby’s Light you will have full control over the cover design process and will be able to choose the artist who best suits your project and needs. Our standard publishing package does not include the creation of your book’s cover. Instead, Gatsby’s Light will provide you with a list of book cover artists and/or open a project for bidding that will attract freelancers from all over the world. You will be able to view samples of artists’ work and choose the right person to design the cover of your book. Cover design prices range from hundreds of dollars for basic designs by little-known artists to thousands of dollars for exceptional designs by well-known artists.

However, if you are not interested in spearheading your own cover design effort, or if you just don’t have the time to do so, Gatsby’s Light will be happy to manage all aspects of the cover design process for you.