One of the main questions that writers ask me about the CompletelyNovel is: “What makes you different to any other self-publishing service out there?” There is a large degree of suspicion regarding any mention of ‘self-publishing’. Having seen the extortionate prices and questionable services offered by some of the self-publishing companies out there, I can see why. So when we tell people that they can publish their work for free and keep 100% of the royalties, they think there must be a catch. But there isn’t. It’s just that CompletelyNovel has taken a new and different approach to the book publishing industry, based on an alternative business model. This means we don’t have to take money from the writers, the people who keep the whole industry going in the first place!

A CompletelyNovel approach
The way CompletelyNovel works is very different to all the self-publishing companies out there. It’s why we can offer writers a great deal on printing, no up-front fees, and allow writers to keep 100% of the royalties from the sale of their books. The key difference with CompletelyNovel is that we are, first and foremost, a community for everyone who loves books. We’re not a publisher, printer or retailer. We link everyone together. We’re taking a web-based approach to the way we run our business – we are looking to create the most useful service that we can, and profit by attracting a large volume of users. The more users, the better for us and for the community as a whole. One way to get more users is to give them a great service and, wherever possible, give it to them for free!

The current system
CompletelyNovel.com came about because we saw that there must be a better way for promising writers to be able to make a name for themselves. The current system involves sending off numerous copies of your manuscript to agents and publishers. These carefully-crafted works will often only be read by inexperienced interns, with very little chance of getting any constructive feedback. This process is not , by any stretch of the imagination, the most efficient way to find talented, fresh writers. You only have to look at the number of very successful writers who have been rejected by a number of publishers/agents and you can start to imagine the number of good writers who are being missed altogether.

Thinking like a rock star
When we were setting up CompletelyNovel, we started thinking about the way bands get taken on by record companies. Most bands have already built up a large fan base before they approach record labels. Sites like MySpace have been great for bands to spread awareness beyond their local area and reach fans of their particular type of music. Being able to prove that you are already popular and have received good feedback is crucial. We want to give writers a chance to produce a product and share it with people who are interested in their type of writing, wherever they may be. Something involving self-publishing and the internet seemed to make sense.

However, the more research I have done, the more I have been amazed and often slightly horrified by some of the self-publishing packages that are out there! There are a large number of companies demanding a lot of money to publish a book without many real benefits to the writers concerned. Yes, they will help you produce a book as you will undoubtedly be aware, but actually producing a book is only one small step towards being a successful author. You’ve got to be able to get it out to the people who will be interested in it, get feedback and, if you really want to send it out to the masses, be able to demonstrate to a publisher that it has a market. With CompletelyNovel, doing that just got a lot easier!

The key ingredients
We use print-on-demand (POD) printers and the great advantage of POD for new writers is that you don’t have to commit to buying lots of books in advance. By coupling this service with a community website, it means that when it comes to the hardest part, marketing, you’re not left on your own. The internet is a great, economical way to get your books to the right people, in the format that they want.

We want writers on CompletelyNovel to enjoy the full benefit of their hard work so it only seems fair that they should get 100% of the royalties from the sales of their book. There are a few other websites that offer free publishing – but all take a chunk of commission from the sale of all books. The books published with them will be available to buy through their own website but these are websites completely focused on writers – they don’t attract or cater for the broader range of readers, who need to see and enjoy the book to make it a success. However good the intentions of those websites may be, it seems they are missing a trick. By putting unpublished writers alongside published books we’re providing a better environment for readers and writers to interact with each other.

Our vision is to provide a hub for everyone in the book publishing industry, where they can easily interact and the journey of a new writer’s book, from concept to sale, is a much more straightforward and efficient one. Publishers, agents, printers (and soon illustrators, editors and translators) can all benefit from the website. CompletelyNovel provides the tools to link everyone who loves books together. By doing this, talented writers are much more likely to get a fair shot at getting their book noticed by the right people, read and published. That’s better for readers too!