There are hundreds of self-publishing services to choose from these days, but few distinguish themselves as custom publishing services. These two titles may seem synonymous, but we truly believe that high-quality and fully customized books are a very different product from self-published books. At OFP, we do custom books, and we're here to tell you what that means (the condensed version, that is).
From the publisher's office: Jan Thrope with her book Inner Visions: Grassroots Stories of Truth and Hope, and Mia Coulton, author of Super Danny.
1. We will meet with you in person. We don’t have an online form. We don’t have bundled prices or package deals. We don’t work with templates, and we don’t make two books that look alike. Every project is new, and completely customized. We love making books that reflect the remarkable individuality of our authors and their stories, and that means meeting face-to-face and having an open, friendly, conversation.
2. We will demystify the publishing process for you, while connecting you with “worldwide distribution.”
It drives me nuts to hear this phrase thrown around online. Let us translate that for you: Amazon. At OFP we don’t use phrases like this all the time because we know they are largely abstract to an author, ambiguous but flashy. We will always be transparent with you. Yes, we can get you worldwide distribution—and that means a whole lot more than Amazon to us. We have the connections that only a true publisher can provide:
• Baker & Taylor distribution: the go-to distributor for libraries nationwide.
• Ingram: the largest book wholesale distributor in the world, supplying the giants like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
• Amazon: every custom book we publish is guaranteed an Amazon listing, if that is the author’s wish.
• Library of Congress: we will send two copies of each custom book to the queen of all libraries so that you have a library control number for use nationwide.
• ISBN: this stands for International Standard Book Number—Orange Frazer has its own block of ISBNs so that every book we publish is known as an Orange Frazer book
• Barcode: may be a no-brainer, but this is what enables you to actually sell your book in physical retail outlets
That’s a whole lot to absorb, but to simplify: we’ve got the connections, and we know what we’re doing. This is where custom publishing distinguishes itself from self-publishing. When you custom publish you get the connections, credibility, and professional look and feel of a true publisher, but in the end you still own your rights to your book.
3. We will make first-class services available to you, whether you need editing, copyediting, design, indexing, proofing…you get the point. We have been publishing for 25 years, we have award-winning editors, we have brilliant designers, and we have a whole team of people dedicated to each and every book project that comes in. When you publish with Orange Frazer, you get all of Orange Frazer.
4. We create books that look like they came from New York, but cost like they came from, well, friendly Midwesterners. We are good at what we do, and we are honest about it. We are a small and diverse team, and we publish because we can’t imagine doing anything else.
5. We are not salesmen. We will not hound you with follow-up calls, we will not push to you to sign, we will not sell you a print run of 10,000 books when we think 500 would be sufficient. We are honest and transparent, and we have no interest in hitting people over the head with our services. We may approach you because we’ve heard about you, because we are inspired by you, because we are intrigued by your story or your service or your company, but we will never chase after you, because it just isn’t who we are. Our authors find us in many ways, and we make sure that we are accessible to them at every turn, and that’s where the salesmanship ends.
In the end, the book will be what you want, because that is not how we measure our success. It’s not about the numbers or the print-run or the sales figures. It’s about your satisfaction with your book. And for OFP, that is what custom publishing really means.
