Publisher FAQ
General
Where can I get support?
What's this private e-publisher forum? Why can't I find it?
Can I help to promote OBS?
I'm going to be working with another vendor - can we merge our accounts?
I want to cancel my vendor account
Adding products
Is my product good enough for OBS?
What's the process?
What price should I set?
Other points to remember
What if I don't have an electronic file?
General
Where can I get support?
OBS
staff do our best to respond to specific queries as quickly as possible,
but we just don't have the time to give lots of individual advice
to several hundred vendors. Fortunately we have forums
where publishers can exchange experience and tips with each other.
Whatever issue you're grappling with, there's a good chance that
other people have dealt with it in the past.
What's this private e-publisher
forum? Why can't I find it?
The main forums are accessible
to any site user, but there's also a special one just for registered
vendors. Please register at our forums and then send your signup name to
custserv@onebookshelf.com
to gain access to this - it's invisible until you do.
It's intended as a space where publishers and site management can
feel safe discussing issues that aren't for wider public consumption.
Please respect this and do not repeat things you read there in public
unless you have permission to do so. If you abuse it your access
may be withdrawn.
Can I help to promote OBS?
Yes
please! More people visiting the site means more sales and a healthier
industry for the future. If you've had good experiences with us,
tell your gaming group and online forums. (If you've had bad experiences,
tell us!) We've produced a number of banners and buttons
that you can add to your website - see the
RPGNow promotion page or the
DTRPG promotion page
.
I'm going to be merging with another
publisher - can we combine our accounts?
Yes. Decide which will
be the master account, handling all future payments from OBS.
When you're ready notify custserv@onebookshelf.com
of the two manufacturer IDs - the products will be moved and the
manufacturer account that's not being used will be deactivated.
All outstanding payments and order history will also be transferred.
The rest of the accounting issues are up to you. We suggest using
the freelance payment reports.
I want to cancel my vendor account
We're
sorry you feel that way. If there are particular problems that need
sorting out, please contact us. If you're
sure you don't want to sell through OBS any more, first deactivate
all your products from your vendor menu. Then contact
custserv@onebookshelf.com
to deactivate your vendor account. Any outstanding earnings will
be paid to you.
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Adding products
Is my product good enough for OBS?
We are keen to
encourage publishers of all sizes and experience. However, allowing
poorly produced products on the site would harm the reputation of
OBS, potentially losing sales for all our vendors. You need good
ideas and good execution. We've produced a standards document with basic advice about presenting your
work professionally. You should have received a copy with your vendor
start-up bundle. You must read this: products that don't
meet the minimum standards may be removed. OBS staff will try
to answer specific questions, but don't have time to advise all
our vendors. You'll find other publishers are often willing to give
advice in the forums.
What's the process?
OK, you're set up as a vendor and
you've got a well produced PDF ready to go. In your vendor account
options go to "Add/Edit/Disable products" and follow the
instructions there to upload the product file and the cover thumbnail
graphic. Then fill in the product form with details of price, system,
etc and a text description that tells browsers what your product
can do for them. When you get confirmation from us you can start
linking to the product page and telling people about it.
What price should I set?
The best advice is to look
around the site at what similar products are going for. The main
factor is page count. Bear in mind that electronic products are usually
priced lower than the same product would be in
physical form - people will pay more for something they can hold
in their hand, and they know your costs are lower. You might also
take account of the likely audience and market - for instance will
it have a small audience who are prepared to pay well to get it,
or is it aimed at a mass market who'll pick it up if the price is
right?
There are two special cases to be aware of:
- We expect every
vendor to produce for-pay products. You can add free products, but because
we won't make any commission to offset the cost of sales we
charge you a
$10 setup fee.
If you only want to distribute your free work, please use a site like RPGHoard.com instead.
- If you want to sell cheap products, the minimum price
is $1. Customers have a minimum checkout threshold of $4.95 to avoid
any extra checkout fees. This is to make sure we cover our processing charges, so products priced
lower than that can't be bought on their own unless the customer
pays an extra charge.
More
about the minimum checkout.
Other points to remember
- Don't use animated gif images as your thumbnails. They annoy
readers and increase the server load on the site. Thumbnails
must be less than 80kb and a maximum of 200 pixels wide.
- Avoid changes to text size and color in product descriptions.
The site has been designed to look good, and unless you know
what you're doing your changes will probably make your product
look worse, not better. If you don't have web design experience
stick to bold, italic and bullet lists.
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Scanning Books
"What if I only have physical books and can't scan them myself?"
Document capture solution
OneBookShelf has employees on staff and equipment and software ready to digitize your hardcopies and covert them to PDFs. Unlock new sales for out-of-print backlist by letting us convert them to digital format for you. We use high-quality scanning equipment along with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software which captures the text from your title so it is searchable in the resulting PDF.
What's it cost? Nothing! We simply take a 10% higher fee on the sales of titles we scan in order to pay for our time and equipment. There is no cost to you apart from shipping us one copy of each title. Titles are normally destroyed during the scanning process, so if you need a title back, please e-mail us before shipping it..
To get started please contact our Sales Manager.
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