Hi

I am in the process of launching a UK based free book creation
service. I am a published artist and designer myself and was getting frustrated when trying to self publish a cookery book for friends and family. So, when I could not find a service that was offering me what I needed I decided to build one myself.

I am now nearly ready to launch the service but would like to canvass people's opinion about it, to see where we are going in the right direction and where we need improving before actually going live.

Could a moderator please tell me if am allowed to post a link to our beta site from here? It really would be most appreciated.

Best regards,

A. Duess

I'm no moderator, but I'm sure they won't object to you linking to your site. We're free of our inhibitions on this site, you see...

Thank you. I think I will just take the risk
If there is any problem with this please mail me and I will remove the link instantly.

The site is located at http://www.pabd.com

Any and all comments and suggestions would be most welcome. Thank you.

Nice site. I registered and had a look around. The site seems clean enough, but I didn't quickly find anything that told me how the process of selling the book went after having paid for the initial 10 copies. Do you have to buy x books to be able to make them available for sale on the personalised selling page?

Thank you for your time, it really is appreciated.

You have to buy 10 books to start publishing. That is your one and only commitment and allows us to keep the site running. Then it is up to you how many or how few books you buy or sell, ever.

Books are sold via a Personal Selling Page. Imagine an amazon page, that gives a good idea of what to expect.
The author sets his or her own selling price, with 100% of the profit above the author's price going to him or her.

The author can buy books at the author's price via myPABD at any time.

OK, so say I bought the initial 10 books at £6.29 GBP, costing me £62.90 GBP. Should other people then buy my book from my selling page, you would print the requested books (individually or by batch?) and I would receive the difference between the author price and the selling price as profit? Or would I have to pay for a batch of books in advance, and then receive the full amount upon sale?

Sorry if I'm not forming the questions particularly well...

Ah, nevermind. I found the answer to that on your site now.

There is no upfront payment for printing books, ever.

We print books if and when either bought by the author or sold to a customer. Details can be found at http://www.pabd.com/mypabd/basic_services/pricingtable.php

Oh, one little thing. I know this is your Beta site, but the clear presence of my unencrypted username and password in the navigation bar is a little disturbing.

<Added>

Which is to say, it's there just after logging in...

I will discuss this with our web developer. Thanks again for your help and input.

Well, we are tentatively up and running. We've got the first couple of books in production and we're nearly set for the US market.
The books that are being published are a children's book, an art book and a book about a race track in the US. We've also got authors finishing a book about the history of the Wilkinson Sword brand and a travel magazine.

So, if anyone would like to publish their own book, you're welcome to use PABD.

Good for you. I wish you the best of luck in the future with your little enterprise.

I'm with IB on that one. Best of luck. It's a good idea and I hope you do well.
Sue

Thank you both for your good wishes. It's scary and exciting at the same time.

New developments abound. We're now working on a reseller program that allows individuals, companies and educational organisations to offer a full book production service from their own web site. We're getting great responses to this. If you're interested in more details please just drop me a mail.