In this article:
Types of books you can buy from Castle Sefton Press
These days books come in lots of formats: audiobook, ebook, paperback and hardback are probably the most common. There are special formats like large print. And then there are illustrated books, box sets and special editions often with decoration of edges or foiled covers.
At the moment, you can only buy Castle Sefton Press paperbacks and ebooks. We plan to add audiobooks and large print editions at some stage in the future. All our books are fiction for adults and our paperbacks are printed on demand.
Buying Castle Sefton Press ebooks
The best way to buy Castle Sefton Press ebooks is from our own online book shop. You can receive your book in whatever form is compatible with your favourite app. When you go to the book’s product page, simply select ‘ebook’ from the format dropdown menu.
Once you have checked out, you will receive an email with the link to your ebook from our delivery partners BookFunnel. From there you can download the book to your usual book app or use their own app, which is free. BookFunnel have their own excellent customer service to deal with any issues that may arise. (We at Castle Sefton Press are not experts on ebook delivery).
If you prefer to buy Castle Sefton Press ebooks from a major platform, you can do that too. They are all available on Kindle, Apple Books, Google Play, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and many others. Scroll down the page of the book you want to buy until you see ‘Alternative Buying Options’. Clicking on the link in this section will take you to a choice of all the online stores where you can make your purchase.
We set the standard retail price for each book to be the same everywhere our books are sold. However, we don’t have full control of pricing on all the platforms, Amazon for example.
Buying Castle Sefton Press paperbacks
Once again, the best way to buy Castle Sefton Press paperbacks is through our own online book shop. Our paperbacks are all print on demand, so the copies are printed to order. This is why you will have to wait for a few days before your order is dispatched.
Clicking through under ‘Alternative Buying Options’, you will see that you can also buy paperback copies from Amazon, Waterstones, Blackwells, Barnes and Noble and Foyles online. All these options are also print-on-demand. Amazon copies will be printed by Amazon, while the other stores sell copies printed by industry giant IngramSpark. There may be some print quality differences between printers, but otherwise the books are identical apart from the barcodes: Amazon barcodes will look different, although the ISBN of the book remains the same.
Why is buying from our own online shop better?
It’s better for Castle Sefton Press because we don’t have to pay a percentage to the shopping platform. Saving that fee helps us to stay in business and create more new books for you to read. That’s true for all authors. If you have the option to buy directly from them, or from their own publisher, that is the way to support them best.
On our own site, we are also free of the big stores’ rules and algorithms, and you are avoiding any questionable practices they may have. We can also deal directly with any problems that arise, rather than you having to go through the platform.
We are not against you buying Castle Sefton Press books on the big online stores though! If that’s where you prefer to buy, please do. That’s why we make our books available there, to give you the choice.
More about print-on-demand
Traditional methods
Traditional publishing relies on large print runs that have to be warehoused and shipped around in quantity. That involves large upfront expenditure that is not practical for small businesses. And it requires expensive storage and transport.
Once the initial marketing period is over, unsold copies are usually pulped or otherwise destroyed in considerable quantities. That is obviously undesirable, and not something we would ever want to do. And, unless the book is a bestseller, when the last of the print run has been sold, remaindered or destroyed, the book will no longer be available. Most books’ sales stabilise at a level such that traditional publishers consider it unviable to pay to print, house and ship large numbers of new copies. Then the book goes ‘out of print’.
Print on demand
Print on demand titles, in contrast, need never go ‘out of print’. There are set-up costs for a new book – editing, cover design, ISBNs for example – but once the book is published those are sunk costs. In future, there is only the marginal cost of printing and delivering individual copies. That is covered by the purchase price.
There are obvious environmental benefits in not printing and then destroying large numbers of books but only printing exactly what customers require. And in not transporting those books across large distances, or using the resources of storage premises.
Another benefit is that necessary changes can take effect from the very next copy sold. Though our books have been rigorously edited and proofread, sometimes unforeseen changes are needed!
Independent content
The most well-known feature of print on demand is that it makes tiny publishers like us, single-author businesses, and even hobby authors viable. It means that a vast range of qualities and types of book are now available to you, the reader, and that it is an independent selection that has not been filtered by the tastes and unconscious biases of traditional industry professionals. There are loads of exciting new books out there to discover. Some of them are right here to buy at Castle Sefton Press.
Global Service
BookVault print in the UK, the US, Australia and Canada. This means that your book will be printed reasonably near to you to save on shipping costs. You can read more about global service in another of our articles.
Criticism
You will come across quite derogatory criticism of print on demand, often claiming that authors who use it are not ‘proper writers’ (whatever that means) and their books are not ‘really published’. This usually comes from those who are ignorant of this realm of publishing, or who have a vested interest to put it down.
You can read more about types of publishing, and what type of publishing we do, in our article Self Publishing vs Traditional Publishing.
Can I buy Castle Sefton Press books in bookshops?
Yes, you can!
We may offer our books to be stocked in a few specific independent bookshops in the UK. Generally, though, neither independent nor big chain book shops stock print on demand titles. Neither does Bookshop.org.
But you can order our books from any UK bookshop and most bookshops worldwide. Under ‘Alternative Buying Options’ on the book’s product page, you can download an ecard with the details to take to your local bookshop. Or you can just write down the title, author and ISBN (make sure it’s the paperback one!).
If you have any problems ordering from your bookshop, please put them in touch with us at contact@castleseftonpress.co.uk.
Libraries
Getting our books from libraries is a great way to read them, usually for free! In this case it’s the library which buys Castle Sefton Press books on your behalf.
We will be focussing on getting our books into more libraries in future, as we are keen to support this kind of access to our work. In the meantime, if your library doesn’t have the title you want to read, please ask them to order it! For the paperback, the information you need to give is the same as for bookshops.
Our ebooks are also available through all the major library services, so you can request them too. (Try to give the library the ebook ISBN in this case. It’s in the ‘Product Specifications.’)
Second-hand books
At Castle Sefton Press we love second-hand books! You may find used Castle Sefton Press books in shops or online. (You can’t buy them from us). If you don’t think you will read a book again, then please do pass it on so that someone else can enjoy it. This is another sustainable practice that we support.
Eco Scheme
There are expenses involved in publishing books. Many thousands of hours are taken to write and publish each book, as well as all the time it takes to run Castle Sefton Press. The down side of this sustainable practice is that we don’t make anything from second-hand sales of our books.
So, if you pick up a used copy of one of our publications and enjoy it, please consider our Eco Scheme and make a donation. There’s a QR code link in the back of our books too. A very small amount is fine. It makes a difference to us! Doing this supports sustainable use of physical books and the creation of original new ones, so please consider it.