Beta Publishing

What is Beta Publishing?

Beta Publishing (sometimes called Preliminary Edition Publishing) is a special form of publishing designed for budding writers who cannot afford the fees that Vanity Publishers charge, lack the resources or skills to self publish and/or wish for assistance in promoting their manuscript to a conventional publisher.

Beta edition books are usually bound by hand and are useful for submitting to larger publishing houses, sharing with friends or selling to raise revenue for self-publishing.

Why Beta Publish?

By submitting a manuscript for transformation into a Beta Edition, the writer is able to have their work professionally proof-read, typeset and formatted into a book with none of the usual costs involved with vanity publishing, self-publishing or persuading a larger publishing house to publish for them.

Beta Publishing is an excellent way to market-appraise a publication prior to release and is also a great way to create a demand for your book. Once a demand is created by the Beta Edition, publishers will be more inclined to express an interest in it and you could find that the Beta Publisher may re-accept the manuscript for conventional publishing or sponsor your publication for publishing through an affiliated publishing house

What about Copyright?

When you submit your manuscript YOU will still continue to hold copyright and intellectual property rights on your manuscript, and the Beta Publisher will only have assigned to them a limited copyright holding with permission to beta-publish in selected formats for your benefit and to re-coup the costs of publishing. This does not affect your future use of the manuscript nor does it place any limitation on the choices you have in relation to your present ownership or future assignment of copyright to any other party or to the Beta Publisher.

What about the cost? Who pays for it?

Honest Beta Publishers will agree (in writing) not to charge you anything for publication and accept that you will not exact any charges upon them. They usually reserve the right to choose the format/s for publication and will agree to provide you with a free copy of the finished book in at least one of the chosen formats. This becomes your payment for the printing rights to the beta edition. If you wish for additional copies to send to prospective publishers or your friends and colleagues, or copies for you to sell to friends, bookstores, at markets or seminars, the Beta Publisher will make these available singly or in bulk at or below market prices.

What sort of things does a Beta Publisher do to prepare the manuscript for Beta Publishing?

Some Beta Publishers may provide a free editorial or co-writer/ghost-writer service if you have difficulties putting what you want to say into words.

Once they accept your manuscript they will lay out the pre-typed text into book format using a computerised professional publishing programme and then may include such things as:

* Spell-checking the manuscript

* Compiling poetry or essays into anthologies

* Adding additional blank pages so chapters always begin on an obverse odd numbered page

* Changing en hyphening dashes to em non-hyphening dashes

* Changing typed quote marks into smart quotes

* Re-formatting any tables or charts to fit page size

* Inserting soft hyphens where necessary

* Inserting page numbering and other appropriate footers and headers

* Correcting syntax and grammatical errors

* Standardising paragraph and quotation formats (so all chapters use the same format)

* Creating a Table of Contents and/or index

* Scanning illustrations, photos, etc for your book

* Adding audio or video clips if the publication is to be in a multimedia format

* Contracting a foreword, preface or blurb writer at their expense

* Contracting a graphic artist to design covers and/or in-book illustrations, once again, at their expense

* Final proof-reading

* Printing/reproducing copies in [a] selected format/s

If I submit my manuscript and they accept it, can I change my mind about having it Beta Published?

What about Book Promotions?

The main differences between beta and conventional publishing:

1. In beta editions the text is spaced at 1.5 spacing and has beta format margins, (which also means that the book appears thicker which may be beneficial to initial marketing).

4. Print-runs are kept small to allow for further development of the book through minor changes in the text or layout without incurring a monetary penalty. This also means that if the author is not happy with the layout or colour scheme, changes may be able to be made on-the-fly. In conventional printing the book would need to be reprinted, costing maybe thousands of dollars.

5. 'One' is the only minimum number of books that needs to be printed and bound at any given time. This means that the cost of production does not need to be underwritten, as would be the case with conventional publishing. Some larger publishing houses do their own underwriting, we at L&R Hartley require the author seek a sponsor to cover conventional publishing underwriting (usually around $3500 for a standard 300 copy print run).

7. With beta publishing we leave the promotion of the book to one of the best-qualified persons: the author. With conventional publishing we contract to promote your book for you within a pre-determined budget and time frame in a manner bounded by our discretion.

8. In conventional printing it is usual for you to assign copyright to the publisher in exchange for royalties. This can prevent or severely limit your future use of the manuscript even though you wrote it in the first place. You become bound by the conventional publisher's choice of editions and constrained by his pricing structure. If he increases his costs, you cannot legally take your manuscript elsewhere. If he goes bankrupt you may well loose access to your manuscript forever (although you may be able to get information about what happened to the company's assets, which include copyrights, from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission).

However, with beta publishing, YOU will still continue to hold copyright and intellectual property rights on your manuscript. The beta publisher will only have assigned to them a limited copyright holding with permission from you to beta-publish in selected formats for your benefit and to re-coup the costs of publishing. This does not affect your future use of the manuscript nor does it place any limitation on the choices you have in relation to your present ownership or future assignment of copyright to any other party or to the beta publisher. If you find that you can have your manuscript published cheaper elsewhere, your beta publisher cannot prevent you from doing so.

9. With conventional publishing your book is usually published in one format (E.g. A4 or standard paperback). With beta publishing the book is usually simultaneously made available in at least three formats: A4, Crown Octavo (or A5) and in electronic format (E.g. on CDROM). It may also be published in a video, audio or online format. This increases the marketability and usefulness of your manuscript right from the start.

10. Conventional publishing may take as much as a year or two from when your manuscript is submitted until you see a copy of your finished book. Beta editions are usually available in a matter of weeks or a month or so at the most. In exceptional circumstances, urgent editions (E.g. for a conference) may be available within days.