DigiNatal - eBook and eZine Publishing

The written word has found a new home, and it is not in print. Hardcopy books are quickly becoming old-school, and cannot hope to offer today's authors the ease of distribution, market penetration or economic reward that electronic publishing now can. With the advent and ever increasing popularity of eReaders, tablet computers and palm-top devices; the demand for digital content has exploded. Now is the time to seize the potential of new technologies, and an emerging business model that is transforming the publishing industry.

DigiNatal Publishing was founded to help authors profit from the innovations of the information age. We are currently soliciting manuscripts from authors who want to realize the full potential of their works in digital form. We offer a complete suite of services geared to help you profitably sell your titles to eager readers who are amassing entire libraries they can carry in a single hand. Many of these people actually shop for new materials through their electronic device of choice. Most of them will no longer frequent mortar-and-bricks bookstores the way they used to. To win their readership, you must publish your work easily, quickly and profitably, with DigiNatal Publishing.

We would be very pleased to do whatever you need to get your works into the hands of paying readers. We can provide;

Whatever you require; we can do what needs to be done to help you secure the advantages of electronic publishing.

It would be our pleasure to answer any question you may have. This is doubly true if you are an Author seeking an electronic publisher. If that's the case; we also have a number of questions to ask you. (You can right-click here to save a plain text version of our questionnaire onto your computer, or you can use our online form; or you may want to do both, so you can quickly copy-and-paste your answers into our online form, for faster service.) In any case, what matters most is that you complete our questionnaire and send your responses to us, whether through email or our online form.

We have developed our questionnaire to help us understand your requirements and gauge the potential for us to work together. Should your interests match with our interests, your answers to this questionnaire will help us to draft the all important publishing agreement we will offer you, so that you can properly consider what DigiNatal Publishing can do for you.

Some other publishers are keen to whet your appetite with an appealing contract, but when they present you with a version for signing, you may discover some hidden catches and costs you hadn't considered. This is particularly disappointing if this discovery comes after you have signed. We don't work that way, and we don't want you to make decisions regarding your options without having something concrete in your hands, like a firm offer that you and your advisors can consider properly, in its full context.

If we send you one of our tailored contracts, you may consider it a firm offer with concrete terms, issued because we are genuinely interested in publishing your work. If we were just to post a generic contract online, that wouldn't settle anything, and we wouldn't want you to get any wrong ideas.

Please understand: We have invested a great deal into our business systems, particularly our publishing agreements, and so we don't like the idea of posting them online as if they were simply 'boilerplate' - because they are not. We have developed them in-house, and have had them vetted by experts, at considerable expense. Our publishing agreements are specialized for our services and the unique ways in which we do business. As such, they constitute some of our most valuable proprietary intellectual capital, and so we insist on handling them accordingly.

More importantly, when we draft and issue a publishing agreement, it is something we do with great care, considering the detailed particulars, and we just would not know how to do this in a generic fashion. Perhaps most importantly, we want to hear from you, and we believe that asking you a few questions is a good way to start that dialogue. We hope you will agree!

1. We are proud to welcome authors from around the world. If your work is in the English language, then we should have no problems on account of where you are located.

2. We do not pay authors an advance. This is because we are geared to work with authors whose work is already in print, and who want to exploit the digital rights they have ***retained*** over their work. In case the particular work you would like to publish electronically has not already been committed to print, we would still be interested if your manuscript is complete and ready for publication.

3. We do not require an advance subsidy in order to publish most works. This means -- most of the time -- we will not ask you to pay any up-front fees in order to publish your work as an eBook and begin its distribution for sale. This is almost always the case if the work in question is already in print. However, there may be some exceptions to this.

If we feel that your work has insufficient commercial appeal to warrant us putting in the required effort up-front, yet you would still like for us to proceed with its publication, we may ask you for a modest advance subsidy, sufficient to cover our production costs. In such a case, we may discount any subsequent commission charges on initial eBook sales until your advance subsidy has been offset by our discounts. This consideration is taken on a case-by-case basis.

If your work requires an inordinate amount of preparatory work, such as for substantial copyediting, extensive textual formatting, numerous illustrations or tables, or an index, we may ask for a modest advance subsidy. Depending on the amount of prep-work, we may (or may not) defray the cost of such an advance subsidy with subsequent commission discounts. This consideration is also taken on a case-by-case basis.

If you request that we provide cover art that is beyond our normal means; we may ask for an advance subsidy to hire a graphic artist that will produce your cover art and grant his or her permission to use it on your cover. Rest assured, we understand the value of an attractive cover, and will do our best to secure one. But, if you're not satisfied, we may have to bring in a hired hand, and this may require an advance subsidy. (Of course, you can hire your own graphic artist to prepare a cover, provided that the result is suitable, publishable, and that you have secured the necessary 'publication release' from the artist, which we can certainly help you with.)

4. Due to technical reasons related to the limitations of many eReaders and eBook file formats; if your work contains illustrations or tables, other than on the cover; these graphic elements may not be perfectly convertible into every eBook format. We can discuss this at length should the need arise.

1. It all starts with our questionnaire and your responses to it. Please answer every question, as this is the only way we can draft a publishing agreement, if this is warranted. When you are done and have sent us your completed questionnaire (if by email, then sent to 'publisher at diginatal dot com'; if using our online form, then simply by clicking 'Submit'); we will confirm receipt of your completed questionnaire, to let you know that our process has begun. It's as simple as that.

2. Along with your completed questionnaire, we also ask that you submit a sample chapter or other substantial portion of the work you would like for us to publish. This will help us to assess your need for editorial services, copyediting and electronic formatting. (When sending your responses and sample chapter, don't be shy to request a 'read-receipt'. In any case, we will issue you a formal receipt via email when we receive a sample of your work.)

3. After we have received your completed questionnaire and a sample of your work; our next step is to input your questionnaire responses into our document drafting system, which we use to prepare publishing agreements, among other things. We will also review the written material that you've sent us, judging it for accuracy of spelling, grammar and punctuation; for structure, style and readability; and for market appeal. (Please forgive us in advance, but we will also examine it for any potential instances of plagiarism, which would mean that we would not publish it.)

4. If everything makes business sense to us, we will output our publishing agreement as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file and send it to you via email, at the address you have provided in your response to our questionnaire.

5. You and your advisors can then review our publishing agreement, and if it is agreeable to you, you can print two (or more) hardcopies, sign and initial every copy everywhere necessary, and send these hardcopy printouts back to us. Ordinary postal service is acceptable, but premium postal or courier services are recommended.

6. When we receive the two-or-more signed and initialled hardcopies of your publishing contract, we will countersign them, initial them everywhere necessary, and send all copies except one of them back to you, for your safekeeping. The copy we keep will be retained in our records. At this point, we will be formally engaged as your electronic publisher.

7. You can send us your completed manuscript as an electronic file, at any time after step #5 above.

Your manuscript must be in one of the following electronic file formats; Microsoft Word '.doc' or '.docx'; Rich Text Format '.rtf'; Open Document Text '.odt'; Word Processing Software '.wps'; Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format '.pdf'; or Hyper-Text Mark-up '.htm', or '.html'.

8. Once we have your complete manuscript in hand, we will subject it to normal copyediting to ensure that it is free of errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling. Along the way we may also render editorial suggestions. With these edits and editorial suggestions done, we will send you back our 'Proof Manuscript' for your detailed consideration and review. This will give you an opportunity to either accept or reject each edit or alteration that we have offered. This process may involve some back-and-forth, the purpose of which will be to arrive at a mutually acceptable text of your work. If we can satisfy each other in this process, the result will be our 'Production Manuscript'.

9. When we arrive at a mutually agreeable Production Manuscript we will then work to convert it into various draft eBook formats, complete with cover art, so you can have one last chance to review things before publication.

10. If you want to demonstrate your care for the environment, we would be most pleased to help you do that, by preparing a very detailed kind of environmental statement for your ebook called a 'life cycle inventory' (LCI). Our LCIs quantify the comparative resource requirements and environmental emissions of your eBook and its hard-copy analogues, to draw a clear comparison between your eBook and its paper-based equivalents. This will establish a defensible estimate of the relative environmental benefits of reading your work in electronic form.

For us to properly quantify the environmental benefits of our eBooks, we have to be able to compare them to the alternative - hardcopy books printed on paper, packed in a box and physically shipped to readers. This is exactly what we have done. In the interest of being thorough, we have prepared a three-way comparison of book buying and delivery options, which we have called 'scenarios'. To do this, we have used a proprietary computer model developed by Synerlux Heuristics, which is another division of our parent company, Synerlux Corporation.

For example: If we were to use our computer model for your project; scenario #1 would see a reader shop online for and buy your specific eBook, and then take delivery of it via instant digital download; which is a scenario we can compute energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions for. In scenarios #2 and #3, we would model for an equivalent-sized hardcopy book (with your choice of hard or soft cover), plus the corrugated shipping carton it would need to be packed in, and also the logistics-related energy requirements and airborne emissions that arise from delivery to a specific destination (and we are open to suggestions, in case you have a particular delivery destination in mind). For scenario #2, we model that delivery is made via express shipping that includes air freight. For scenario #3, we model that delivery is via ground shipping only, carried end-to-end by truck. All three scenarios model for an equivalent-sized book, delivered over an equivalent distance.

For the sake of being more than fair; we have used high-end analytical estimates while modelling the eBook scenario #1; and have made a number of best-case assumptions for scenarios #2 and #3. On the whole, this would tend to overestimate energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions for our eBooks; and on the flip side, for scenarios #2 and #3; this would tend to underestimate the resource requirements and resulting emissions of comparable hardcopy books. For the two hardcopy book scenarios #2 and #3, we are able to model not just energy requirements, but also the need for wood and recycled fibres; and as for environmental emissions, we can model not just greenhouse gases, but a whole roster of airborne, solid and liquid wastes.

Of course, it is a little like comparing apples and oranges, to measure a dematerialized eBook that is delivered by digital download, against hardcopy books that are packed in boxes and shipped using trucks and airplanes. To do this, we needed to establish a 'common denominator', and so we have prepared the greenhouse gas footprints of all three scenarios.

This explains the very broad strokes of what we call a (cradle-to-gate) 'distributed and comparative life cycle inventory' (a DC-LCI). We would be very happy to prepare a DC-LCI for your eBook, which is something that we would do for you at no cost whatsoever, if you choose DigiNatal Publishing as the electronic publisher for your eBook.

For more information about this unique service offered by DigiNatal Publishing, please read about our Environmental Statements.

11. Once we have your final approval, we will assign an 'International Standard Book Number' (ISBN) to each of the eBook file formats of your work. With this done, we can produce publication editions of your work.

12. With publication editions ready, we will undertake 'legal deposit' with the 'National Library of Canada', so that your eBooks will become a permanent part of the official archive. This step would also involve cataloguing your eBooks, which also helps to bring them to the attention of retailers.

13. Our next step would be to offer your eBooks for sale on our website, which we can do very quickly. If you have a website, or would like for us to put one together for you so that your eBooks can be sold through your website as well, we can certainly help with that as well. (You will first need to acquire the internet website domain that you want. It is in your own best interest to handle this yourself, and we can easily walk you through this process, step-by-step. Please do us both a favour and speak with us first, before shopping for a domain name.)

14. With these 'direct sales' channels established in the previous step #13, we will then work to establish the 'third-party sales' channels. These third-party sales are for eBooks that we will sell through internet-based eBook retailers. To proceed on this, you can choose either to authorize us to list your eBooks for sale with every retailer we deal with, or you can choose to authorize these dealings with specific retailers, one at a time, each one upon your express approval, as you will specify in your response to our questionnaire, mentioned above.

15. As your eBook sells, and as we receive payments from our third-party retailers, we will disperse royalties to you as quickly as we can. We have the systems to make all the necessary calculations, so that by the time the payments we receive are cleared through our bank account, we can immediately issue royalty payments to you and our other Authors. As a matter of policy, we will disperse royalty payments to our Authors without holding them back until arbitrary intervals have passed, unlike how other Publishers pay their Authors. In general, we will disperse royalties from direct sales at the same time as we pay out royalties from third-party sales.

16. Along with each royalty payment, you will also receive a detailed statement that clearly passes-on as much sales information as is practicable concerning exactly how and where and when your eBook is selling. This way you can monitor how well your promotional efforts are proceeding.

Simple answer: It varies.

The equation we use is radically different from the one used by other publishers. Our process is different, our fixed and variable costs are different, and the value chain partners we rely on to bring your eBooks to market are different too. Altogether, this means our cost structure is different, and the risk environment we operate under is different. Perhaps most significantly, we measure our 'outlays' in terms of hours, not dollars.

We are reluctant to state precise figures, percentages or ranges on our website because we don't want you to base any decision on what could prove to be a faulty basis; given your specific circumstance, concerning your particular publication. That's just not our style. However, we will say this here and now:

We believe very strongly that the 'thicker margin' should go to our Authors -- often the much thicker margin. This is because we also believe that the keys to our success are made from service excellence for our Authors, and a supremely efficient business model, which are already stock and trade for us.

After we have a chance to properly consider your publication -- given the responses you will provide to our questionnaire, and the sample of the work you will send us -- we will assess the potential for us to efficiently earn a reasonable profit, while ensuring that the larger portion of net proceeds can still flow to you. If, by our estimation, that potential is reasonably certain; we will draft a publishing agreement that will precisely detail all of the figures, percentages and ranges you would need to judge -- not to mention every term and condition that gives context to those numbers. This way, you can properly consider engaging the services of DigiNatal Publishing.

In our opinion, this is the only proper way for you to make such an important decision.

To find out exactly what this would mean for you, simply complete our questionnaire and send us a sample of the work you would like for us to publish. We will respond to you within three or four business days, if not sooner.

Please let us know if you have any questions. To speak with someone over the phone, dial (00+ 1+) 416-428-1716.

Please note: Our primary time zone is Eastern Standard (GMT-5hrs.), but we keep very wide office hours. If we cannot answer your call, please leave a detailed message and we will respond as quickly as we can. Be sure to leave your name, phone number and also tell us what time zone you are in, so that we don't call back in the middle of the night.