How did we get here?
It started a couple of years ago when one of Shibden’s founders wrote a book, and then had no idea what to do with it. So, she did an internet search about how to publish a book. She found that Amazon will let you self-publish, will print on demand and will walk you through the process. Easy!
She uploaded her manuscript, followed the prompts, even used their easy cover creator and BING BANG BOOM in 72 hours she had a book!! It was exciting.
Then she got the first copies. It turns out formatting is harder than she thought. Page numbers didn’t match. The Table of Contents was HUGE. It seemed like every page had a typo. And the cover was ….. well…. just horrible.
She scurried to fix things and was horrified that friends and family had already purchased the very flawed copies. Many, many edits later she had a finished book she could be proud of. Then she found out that there are other places to self-publish, but that’s another story.
Meanwhile, her son, another founder of Shibden, had finished a book and was anxious to see it in print. They had learned so much from Mom’s early failures, right?
Well, maybe they avoided one or two problems but overall… it was pretty bad. The editing was terrible, the cover was boring…it needed a lot of work.
A few books and a lot of trial and error later, this incredibly talented duo of writers thought, “Wouldn’t it be lovely if there was a way to help people not make the same mistakes?” With the enormous amount of books being self published every day, good books are getting lost in the shuffle.
Oh! One more thing. Knowing that a lot of authors are probably in the same financial situation that they were, they decided to not ask for any money up front for their services. Shibden will work for a percentage of royalties, if you make money, we make money. It’s that simple.
Shibden Publishing 