Thursday 22 September 2011

Testimonial from Trudie and Lloyd Thompson

CGW Publishing took us seriously right from the offset, and we have had the best guidance and help you could possibly imagine. We've never done anything like this before and we never in our wildest dreams believed we'd ever write a book, but hey we did and then the search began for a professional to jump onboard and advise us and that's exactly what our Publishers have done.

Christopher is not only knowledgeable but he can read our minds, he knows what is needed and his suggestions have always been brilliant.

 Trudie and Lloyd's book, Dreams Do Come True, is available now from all good book stores.

Thursday 15 September 2011

Testimonial from Paul Boross

"When I was looking for a publisher, it was important for me to find one that specialised in business and psychology books so that they could help me hone The Pitching Bible for the right market. Not only was Christopher Greenaway the perfect editor but his team managed the whole involved process of getting the book to market with dedication and professionalism.

Since publication, the CGW team's focus, creativity and service business expertise has continued unabated and has resulted in The Pitching Bible gliding gracefully up the Amazon charts. I highly recommend CGW Publishing."

Paul Boross, The Pitch Doctor & author of The Pitching Bible

Wednesday 14 September 2011

Trudie and Lloyd Thompson to Launch 'Dreams Do Come True' at WH Smith, Manchester Trafford Centre in November

Dreams Do Come True is the new book by Trudie and Lloyd Thompson, telling the incredible story of their 12 year journey through IVF treatment, losing a business and even bankruptcy.



They're currently in discussions with WH Smith in Manchester's Trafford Centre to arrange a launch event, sometime in November 2011.

Their book is at the very final production stages and should be ready to buy within the next few weeks, so the launch event will be very exciting for them, as they are donating profits from book sales to support the IVF unit at St Mary's Hospital, Manchester.

We'll be posting more details nearer the time.

Wednesday 7 September 2011

Judge a Book By Its Cover

We're just working on a new book by Ronna Smithrim & Christopher Oliphant on the subject of 'Radical Acceptance', and in trying to work out the book's target market and pricing, I've realised that online shopping has skewed the book market.

I've said before that cover design is important in selling a book, and that designing a cover for print is different to designing one for that little thumbnail that you see when browsing online.

Printing a book is a fixed cost, so the main variable that determines margin is the cover price. A lower price might mean more sales, but not necessarily. This introduces another variable into the equation - the page count.

A book of 100 pages might cost *2 to print, and a book of 500 pages might cost *6 to print. I've used * as a generic currency symbol here.

However, when you look on Amazon, you see that all of the books in your genre are in the range of *5 to *10. Clearly you can't price a 500 page book at *5, because you'd make a loss on each one you sell. But if you price it at *15, you potentially reduce sales.

When someone walks into a book shop and picks up your book, the size of it communicates perceived value. The thicker it is, the more the reader thinks it is worth, up to a point, which is the size at which the reader decides that they can't be bothered to read something that big.

If you want a light holiday read, you don't buy War & Peace.

If you want a 'ten tips to being a great manager' type book, you don't want something that will take you 6 months to read.

And a book on speed reading? How thick should that be?

So I think that what authors - and publishers - are doing is increasing margins by making books smaller. Take half your content out and save it for your next book.

This creates a problem for anyone with a 500 page book - although Amazon does list a book's page count, do you look at it when you're choosing a book? Do you use it to determine the value of a book?

Probably not. You probably just look at the price and assume that all of the books are about the same size...