FAQ for Book Authors

  • Q: Can I publish a book with Pipeno?
  • A: Yes, you can.
  • Q: What formats does Pipeno allow me to publish?
  • A: Pipeno allows you to publish an e-book and/or a printed book.
  • Q: How will Pipeno print and deliver my book?
  • A: Pipeno works with business partners to print your book at a cost of 20 cents per page and deliver your book to the buyer's address. Postage will depend on the delivery address, but the buyer typically pays these costs.
  • Q: Will Pipeno help with designing the cover for my book?
  • A: Yes. Our designers can work with you to design a cover for you book. Our discounted design fee is $50 an hour and the design can usually be completed in four to eight hours, costing you approximately $200 to $400.
  • Q: Will Pipeno help me with page layout?
  • A: Yes. Our designers can help with the page layout of your book. Our discounted design fee is $50 an hour and a simple layout can usually be completed in four to eight hours, costing you approximately $200 to $400.
  • Q: Does Pipeno offer editing services?
  • A: Yes, for books written in English. You can use our editors at $50 per hour.
  • Q: How can I get my ISBN through Pipeno?
  • A: Pipeno will assign you an ISBN for a processing fee of $120. Please e-mail ISBN@pipeno.com if you would like us to assign you an ISBN.
  • Q: What if I want to use Pipeno for publishing my book, but I don't live in the United States? How will the legal issues be handled?
  • A: You are responsible for handling your own legal matters. Among the key issues related to book publishing are copyright ownership issues. Most publishing companies either take over copyright ownership of your book or share it with you. Pipeno's position is that you have copyright ownership of your book. We have distribution rights.
  • Q: How will my book be priced?
  • A: You can decide the price of your e-book based on how similar books targeting your niche are priced. As a general guideline, we suggest pricing e-books at $9.99. Printed books sold on Pipeno network sites must have a minimum price = (number of pages x 20 cents per page) to adequately cover the cost of printing and delivery while making a profit. This means that a 100-page book printed book would cost at least $20 plus $5 for shipping and handling within the United States. Shipping outside the United States will be determined by the destination where the book is being sent.
  • Q: How much of the book price will represent taxes and other fees, how much will represent Pipeno profit and how much will my share be?
  • A: For e-books, you get 80% of the sale and Pipeno gets 20%. You are responsible for paying all relevant taxes and fees required by your country/state/city from your 80%. Pipeno will do the same from its 20%. For printed books, the revenue-sharing arrangement will be 80-20 as well, but after 10 cents per page is deducted for the cost of printing and binding, plus $5 for shipping and handling is also deducted. As an example, for a 100-page book priced at the minimum price of 20 cents per page, the total will be $20. The buyer will pay an additional shipping and handling fee of $5. So the total sale price would be $25. Of this amount, $15 will go to Pipeno to cover the cost of printing and delivery. Then, from the remaining $10 profit, you will get $8 and Pipeno will get $2.
  • Q: Does Pipeno do any marketing for my book?
  • A: As a general rule, no, Pipeno does not do any specific marketing for your book but you may benefit when our other marketing activities drive traffic to your site. Keep in mind that Pipeno allows you to have full control of the entire publishing and selling procedure. We understand that nobody cares about that book more than you do, so we are offering you support for marketing your book through a Pipeno site. Instead of losing your book among thousands of others on other sites, we actually enable you to build a niche audience for your book, on your own site, by leveraging all the Pipeno features. This way people interested in the same topic will more easily find it and buy it. Also, the majority of the profit from the sales goes to you.
  • Q: So, I will sell my own book on my personal site and still get to keep 80% of the proceeds?
  • A: Yes, the only request Pipeno has is for you to be committed to marketing your book and to adding value to your site audience.
  • Q: I am a book author so my writing focus will go into my book(s). That is the content I love to create and there is what I am good at. I don't have time, energy or interest in writing content for a blog or a social-publishing site like Pipeno. My time and energy are for my book. Also I might be good at writing books, but I know I suck at writing other types of content (e.g., online news around my book subject). That said, I am very interested in the selling/printing/delivery service that Pipeno offers for book authors like myself. Can you help me understand why should I invest time in writing content for and publicizing my Pipeno site?
  • A: Here is why it is worth your while to spend as much time publicizing your Pipeno site as you invested in writing your book: Book authors' gross revenue from traditional publishing typically equals the royalty rate x copies sold x book price. The royalty rate is typically 10% of the book price. And the book price is the wholesale price at which the book was sold to the bookstore, which is typically half the price you see on shelves. So, if you successfully wrote and published an awesome book on a niche topic and it sold 10,000 copies at a wholesale price of $10 per copy, you would make $10,000. The publisher makes $90,000 for their investment in marketing, printing and distributing the book. Using the Pipeno model, the ratio gets reversed in your favor to 80:20 but you have to now take responsibility for marketing the book while Pipeno prints and distributes the book for you. Pipeno provides you the tools to build a community around the subject matter that your book covers so you can market and sell your book directly for a long time to come. By aggregating relevant content, and writing original content that matters to your audience, you will help the community grow. Awareness about your book will grow in parallel because it will be nonintrusively marketed on your site. Now let's do the new math. Say your community grows to 100,000 people over the course of two years, and 10% of the community buys your 100-page book as an e-book download at the price of $10 while 10% of the community buys the printed version at $20, delivered to their doorstep. You get to keep 80% of the revenue from the e-book downloads, which comes out to $128,000 and 80% of the profits i.e. $80,000 from the printed version. That's $208,000 over two years for selling 20,000 copies of your book. Compare that to the $20,000 or so you would earn from traditional publishing channels.
  • Q: Will I still benefit from the other monetization ways Pipeno offers for every site, such as virtual gifts?
  • A: Yes.
  • Q: How can I publish a book?
  • A: You simply upload it to the site using the control panel.
  • Q: How long it will take from the minute I submit the book until it's ready to be sold?
  • A: If your book layout and cover design etc. has been completed, your book is ready to be sold as soon it is uploaded. Audiences who pay for an e-book will be able to download one instantly. Audiences who pay for a printed book will have to wait a few days to receive the book because it will need to be printed and delivered.
  • Q: Can I add images to my book?
  • A: Yes, you can use stock photography/imagery available on our site or other stock image sites, or you can hire one of the illustrators from our freelancer network at $50 per hour.
  • Q: Do I still own the rights to my book after it is published?
  • A: Yes. But you also give perpetual irrevocable rights to Pipeno so that we can continue to sell your book on your site in case you stop maintaining it and we have to allocate resources to maintain the site in order to avoid disappointing the audience.
  • Q: Is there a minimum or maximum number of books that I can or must publish?
  • A: No.
  • Q: Can my royalty check be split between a co-author and myself?
  • A: Yes. Pipeno will pay you and you can pay your co-author.