When you self-publish your books on any of our sites, we want you to be a success - we really do, which is why we have put together this brief guide which outlines the standards we offer for those of you beginning out on the writing adventure and need some ideas and suggestions.

 

There is absolutely no point in anyone publishing or self-publishing a book that is poorly presented or unreadable. Customers demanding refunds is bad for business and once an author gains a reputation for a poor product, customers will avoid you in the future, no matter how much better your subsequent stories are.

 

There are four essential parts to your submission of a story on Fiction4All, and to make a success of your story, please at least think about what is written below.

 

PART 1 - SUBMISSION OF THE STORY DETAILS

 

Submissions are made using the Publish a New Book option in the Control Centre within our publishing suite. As a self-publishing author you are responsible for every aspect of your book. To self-publish with us, you first need to join us as a member. As part of that process you will also have to tell us how you want us to pay you from the options available once you have confirmed your membership. Next you will need to set up your pen name. If you write under more than one name, that is fine - you can set up additional pen names (or author profiles) under your member account as you need them.

 

With your first pen name set up, you are now able to submit your first self-published title to us. Select the Publish a New Book option on the Control Centre. You can either queue your book or publish go Direct To Sale, a process that can take as little as 10 minutes!

 

You must choose the DTS route if you book is under 5000 words or you want to publish a free book.

 

The submission process comprises a form where you first need to select the category for your title.

 

Next you must provide the Title of your book. Then select the author from the pen name(s) you have set up. You can select a period setting if this is relevant to your story. You need to provide the word count of the story itself - do not include any author information or copyright notice, or anything that is not the actual story. You may optionally enter a short headline for your book - up to a maximum of 80 characters. Then we need the blurb or synopsis - the sort of thing you would find on the back of a paperback book.

 

Keywords can help us get your book noticed on search engines, but they are optional and you must avoid any words that are on our banned list. Next you must provide a price in US dollars. This needs to be between $0.29 and $19.99. We will calculate Sterling and Euro prices from the Dollar price.

 

For free books using DTS your price will be set to zero and you will have options to either submit a free book as standalone or as being linked to a longer book already on sale with us. So, for example, you could put a longer story on sale and then create a free book of under 5000 words as a sort of sampler which links back to the full book.

 

When you submit the above information you will be taken to a second screen. This will let you enter further information depending on the classification of your story. This will include selecting a number of genres that your story best fits into.

 

You then need to check the legal disclaimer. If you are using the Direct To Sale submission option then you must load the file formats you wish to make available to customers. If you are using the Queued Submission route then please provide the various files we need to be able to publish your story.

 

After you have completed the first screen you will be taken to a screen so you can upload your submission files.

 

That completes Part 1 - the submission form.

 

PART 2 - COVER IMAGE

 

The cover design is your responsibility. Covers must be sensitive - no graphic sex scenes, genitals etc - the same as you would expect to provide to Smashwords, Kindle etc. The cover MUST contain the title and author name and match that in the submission form and in the manuscript you submit.

 

Covers must be of JPG format. For covers submitted using our Queued Submission route, the cover needs to be at least 400 pixels wide and in portrait presentation. Our site works best if your cover is 600 wide by 900 tall, or similar proportions. We will create the various formats we use on the site from your supplied cover design. If you are submitting using the Direct To Sale route, your cover must be 200 - 250 pixels wide and 250 - 400 pixels tall.

 

 

PART 3 - EXTRACT/EXCERPT

 

It is important that you provide us with an extract or sample from the story that we can use to entice readers to purchase your book. This should be anything from a few hundred words for a short story up to a maximum of about 3000 words for a full-size novella. It should be submitted as a separate file in RTF or DOC format - in exactly the same format and layout as in your book. Again - we will use the file you supply to create the extract file formats we use on our sites.

 

If you are using the Direct To Sale route, you will need to copy/paste your chosen extract/excerpt in the box provided.

 

PART 4 - THE SCRIPT

 

This is what the customer buys and we believe it is really important that the quality they buy makes them want to come back for more. To that end we are setting some basic standards that we think you should at least consider. We reserve the right to remove any book from sale if it receives a lot of adverse comments.

 

First and foremost there must be no links to any other site, no advertising of books that are not on sale through Fiction4All, and those adverts must link to the products on our site. With effect from October 2018 we will be removing from sale any book that advertises or links to any other site, including Amazon, Smashwords, B&N etc. They do not like you linking to us so we ask you to respect the fact we do not want our visitors disappearing off to them.

 

Manuscripts for our Queued Submission option must be submitted in Word DOC, Word DOCX or RTF format. Your file MUST contain the following information in the document properties - title and author (to match the cover and your story). This protects your real identity and also ensures we publish the right files together. If you are submitting your book through our Direct To Sale option you must provide all the formats you wish to make available to our customers.

 

Do not include vast volumes of extracts or excerpts from any of your books, or great lists of your other titles - they really put customers off. Before submitting your scripts PLEASE ensure there are no adverts or links to other sites. We reserve the right to stop selling any book which we find includes such content.

 

Always use hard paragraphs in your script, not manual line feed markers to end paragraphs with. Do not use TAB markers to indent paragraphs, use the Paragraph Indents and Spacing menu in Word to set indents, before, after and line spacing. Lines should be single spaced with no before or after spaces. Paragraphs should be indented to at least 0.7 cms on the first line.

 

FOR QUEUED SUBMISSION

 

THE FIRST PAGE

The first page must contain ALL of the following centred on the page with no tab spacing for alignment. The fonts we mention here are our preferred fonts but the use of them is up to you.

Title (Cambria font size 24 max)

Author Name (Cambria font size 20 max)

Copyright {Author Name} (Times New Roman 12 point) - exclude {} here and below

 

The right of {Author Name} to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights and Patents Act 1988.

 

All rights reserved.

 

Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author.

 

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

 

End the first page with a hard Page Break as below.

 

THE STORY ITSELF

 

The first page of the story and all subsequent Chapters must start on a New Page which has been created using the Insert/Break/PageBreak command and NOT using carriage return/linefeeds.

 

Check that Chapter Headings are consistent (font and size) throughout the manuscript.

 

Section breaks within chapters should be denoted by THREE asterisks centred on the page with no Tab insertions

 

Paragraph formatting should be zero spaces before and after paragraphs, with first lines indented by at least 0.7 centimetres. Paragraphs should be aligned as justified if your word processor version allows this.

 

Use of speech marks must be consistent. If your speech uses 'thoughts' in quotes then use double quote marks for real speech and single quotes for 'thoughts'. Do not underline text for emphasis - moderate use of italics for this looks much better - but we suggest you do not overdo it!

 

Spelling MUST be checked thoroughly as must grammar. Use Word's tools to do this and remove as many errors as you can. Advise us if speech requires certain dialects (eg Deep South drawl) so we can ignore it in our final checking. Such dialects are impossible to spell check!

 

The Manuscript MUST end with the words THE END, aligned to the centre of the page. It is the only way in an electronic book that we and the customer know we have the whole file.

 

CONTENT

 

If you are submitting an adult story then please ensure it does NOT include any of the following:

 

Any sexual activity involving minors (under 18s) even if they are simply "around"

Any sexual activity involving animals or corpses

Any sexual activities that include Rape, Snuff, Smothering, Scat, Permanent Injury

From February 2022 your story must NOT include the following:-

incest, pseudo-incest or “family erotica”

 

Please check our guidelines online as content restrictions can change depending on new rules laid down by Visa and Mastercard from time to time.

 

 

FINALLY

 

Thanks for reading this and hopefully it gave you some ideas. We want you to become a successful and popular author on our sites. We are incredibly busy as a publisher both with our own authors, other publishers and self-publishing/independent authors. PLEASE follow our guidelines to help us get your book published as quickly as we can, and make sure we have a valid, working email address for you in case we need to contact you.

 

Wishing you the very best for success with us,

 

Stuart Holland

CEO Fiction4All