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 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

Another page on our website clearly states, "[With Beta Publishing] there are no royalties paid nor is there any hidden expense to the author". Through our website and through emails (and print media where email is not available), we will agree (in writing) not to charge you anything for publication and accept that you will not exact any charges upon us. We 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.

The cost of preparing the book for beta-publishing is recouped by the publisher selling a limited number of copies through an subsidiary merchandising company. Once these copies are sold, the Publisher's rights to sell copies of your book (other than to you) ceases.

Because all other copies of the book are sold to you at cost for you to market or give away, it is ridiculous to increase your costs, by us factoring in a royalty payment that you would then receive.

In cases where the book is subsidied or sponsored for the purpose of giving it away free to promote either the subject matter or to promote the author, because the publisher receives no income from sales there is no revenue for royalties, the publisher's initial costs having been either met by sponsorship or donated to the project by the publisher.

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 statutory regulatory body in your country). 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 recoup 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, in fact L&R Hartley openly encourage you do continue to look for the best outcome for all your hard work.

If you do have your book published elsewhere, remember that the Beta Publisher's rights to sell copies of your book (other than to you) will immediately cease once the costs of production have been recouped. This number of copies is determined solely by the actual costs of publishing (manuscript assessment, typesetting, formatting, electronic engineering, graphic artwork, licence fees for fonts and/or commercial artwork, design of packaging & promotional items and administration costs) and for production (duplication fees, packaging, warehousing, etc.).