June 9, 2024

Living the dream with publishing expert and founder of 1106 design Michele Defilippo

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In today’s episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we sit down with Michele DeFilippo, a veteran in the publishing industry with over 50 years of experience. As the founder of 1106 Design, Michele shares invaluable insights on how authors can navigate the complex world of book publishing, retain more of their earnings, and make informed decisions. Whether you're an aspiring author or a seasoned writer, this episode is packed with practical advice on professional services, publishing models, and how to produce a high-quality book. Don't miss it!
www.1106design.com

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> Curveball>Welcome, um, to the Living the Dream podcast with curveball. Um, if you believe you can achieve Chee Chee.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome to the living a Dream with curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today, I am joined by writer and book publishing expert, Michelle DeFilippo.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Michelle has more than 50 years of experience in helping authors publish their book and keep more of their money and help them ask the right questions. She is the founder of 1106 design, so we're going to be talking to her. If. So, if you know of any authors out there that need help publishing their book and getting the best bang for their buck, this is the episode for them. So, Michelle, thank you so much for joining me today.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Thank you so much, Curtis. I appreciate being here.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Okay. Um. Uh, I've been in the publishing industry, as you noted, for more than 50 years now.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>It's.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>My first job was in New York City in 1972 with Crown publishers.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>And I've been on the publishing business roller coaster in one form or another since that time. And now, since 2001. I own 1106 design, which helps independent authors produce top quality books. But not only that, keep control of their book and make more money every time they sell a book, because unlike publishers, we don't take a penny of their revenue when a book is sold. We charge for services like everybody has to, but we don't take any more money out of their pocket than that. I thought I would start doing these podcasts because it seems to me that a lot of people, when they finish writing a book, the first thing they do is go look for a publisher. But original self publishing means the author is the publisher, and they really don't have to do that. So I want to remind people that there is a different, older, better model for self publishing than they may be aware of.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So, let's talk about the publishing models. Which publishing model is most advantageous to, uh, an author?

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Well, if you can bear with me a minute.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>The original publishing model is traditional publishing.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>That's what we're most familiar with, where the publisher takes the. Buys the rights to the book from the author, and, um, pays the experts to produce the book, and then pays the author a small royalty when a book is sold. Under that traditional model, the author doesn't pay anything, the publisher takes all the risk, and the publisher gets most of the reward when the book is sold, which is fair, because they made the investment to produce that book. Now, original self publishing meant the author was the publisher, the author would hire the experts to produce the book and the author would keep all of the revenue when a book is sold. Now, in the last 20 years or so, the field has become very complicated. There's all sorts of other companies in the middle ground now between those two, uh, uh, extremes, if you would want to call it that. And some of these companies are good, others are not so good. What's happening in a lot of cases is that these companies call themselves publishers, hybrid publishers, self publishing companies, whatever term they use to describe themselves. What they do is they charge the author to produce the book and they take money out of the author's pocket when a book is sold.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>So I just want authors to understand how publishing works and make sure that they have the information they need to make an informed decision when they go. Choose somebody to help them out.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So talk about the most important services that an author will need to publish a book.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Well, uh, I will always, uh, advocate for professional services. You'll hear a lot online about doing it yourself, but that's usually a mistake. And people who have been in publishing for a long time will always recommend that you hire a great editor, that you hire a qualified book covered cover designer, that you have the interior pages of your book typeset professionally by someone who does interior page book design. And then after that we normally proofread the book and then we go ahead and make the ebook. We take an additional step for publishers and we help them get set up with their own print on demand accounts so that when a book is sold, they will get all of the revenue from sales, they will get all of the sales reports, so they will never lose control of their book. And they will always be paid directly from the print on demand platforms.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Not, not hope to get paid from a middleman.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, you just answered my question about editing and book design. So let all the authors know out there what they need to know or what's most important to know about people who are going to be buying their books.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Well, the issue is buyers look at books just as the way they look at buying any other product, right.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>They hope they're getting their money's worth. And if they find out they didn't get their, um, money's worth, if the book is not professionally produced, let's say it's not edited well, or there's a lot of typos that weren't found, or the interior page type setting is not up to professional standards, they're going to jump online and they're going to be mad that they wasted their money and they're going to put a bad review up for your book.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>So some people kind of cut corners on these services because they want to save the money. And while that's understandable, you have to remember that the buyer doesn't care what your budget is. The buyer cares about whether or not they got a good book for their money. And so that's why I always advocate for the professional services.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So, uh, if an author is out there searching for a qualified, professional covered designer, what tips can you give them on that?

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Well, what I always recommend is that you might find designers online and you can look at their design portfolios, you can look at their samples to see what kind of covers they typically make and what level of expertise they have.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>But if you look at only those samples, you may not get the full picture. So what I recommend authors do is they open up a major publisher website, like Macmillan or Random House or something like that, and then they compare the designer that they're considering, compare those covers to what the major publishers are doing right now, and, um, in a lot of cases, you will see a difference. You will see that a designer is not working up to that professional standard, and you can usually spot it right away.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, how much can an author expect to pay to be able to produce a book for traditional publishing standards?

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Uh, it's not cheap because people who have the experience put a lot of hours into every stage of the process. So I would say for a 200 page book, uh, typically it always depends on the length of the book and the complexity of the book. We've done everything from 50 page books to 850 page books. But for a typical 200 page book, uh, full service, from editing all the way through to distribution, setup and advice along the way, we would go about$9,000.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Yeah. You're not lying when you say it's not cheap.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>No, it's not.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Uh, and you can get cheap, just like you can get cheap in any other line of things you might purchase. But there's ways to cut corners, and then there's ways to do it right. We have editors and designers and so forth that spend a whole lot of time thinking about every aspect, every word, every design idea. And we work back and forth with the author quite a bit. So, um, just a lot of time goes into it. Probably by the time all is said and done, we might spend 100 or 150 hours to produce that book for you.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, I just answered my next question. Why choose your company?

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So throw out your contact information.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So authors who want to get in touch can do so.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Sure. My company is 1106 design.com dot. You can go to our website and I believe in 100% transparency. You'll see all our prices online, you'll find all our samples, see some educational articles that we've written over the years. And if you go to our website, you can put in your email address and get a copy of my free book published like the pros, which gives you a brief overview of the industry, the things you can expect, the things you should know about, and most importantly, the financial calculations that you should make before you decide which provider to work with. Because on a typical 200 page book, again, let's say it sells for$20, the retailer gets a cut of the money. So at Amazon they'll take 40% or $8 off the COVID price. Uh, the printing cost is going to be about dollar four. So the net to you should be around dollar eight. At some of the other channels the net would be around dollar five to the author. But some of these self publishing companies that I talked about earlier, they might pay the author as little as a dollar or two every time they sell a book. So, you know, I'm happy to give anyone a free consultation if they want to work through the numbers and figure out what they need to do. My goal in these podcasts is to just make sure authors know the full story and then they can make whatever decision seems best to them.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So tell us about any upcoming projects that 1106 design or you yourself are working on that the listeners need to know about.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Well, I have a good team of people here, and last year we finished an 850 page biography of Winston Churchill, which was a, uh, very good project. We enjoyed it immensely. It was called no peace with Hitler and it was Churchills, um, actions and decisions throughout world War two and why he made those decisions. It was a very interesting book and it was a good challenge for us too. It had something like 2000, 3000 footnotes, I forget the exact number. Uh, but it was really a good project that we were very proud of and the author was very proud of when we were done.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All right, ladies and gentlemen, at 70 six, design.com, close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to touch on that you would like to talk about or just any final thoughts you have for the listeners?

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> Michelle DeFilippo>No, I would just say educate yourself because there's a lot of misinformation online talk, um, to a lot of people. Don't give in to pressure tactics.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Just this week, uh, I talked to an author who was talking to another company, and he said they gave him a deadline that the proposal they sent him would

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00 p.m. on Tuesday if he didn't sign it. And tactics like that are just not good, and they don't need to be burdened. Um, a burden for the author. Um, some of these publishers, too.

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Keep in mind that they will control your book again, this week, we talked to an author who went with a publisher previously. They would not release the files that they made for his book. Now he's having to start over with us to continue to publish his book.

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So there's a lot of pitfalls. Talk to somebody who can advocate for you. Ask a lot of questions. Anybody who gets impatient with your questions, you should just disqualify right away. It's not about pressure. It's about producing a good book and about you making as much money as you possibly can once it's published. So that's my advice.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All right, ladies and gentlemen, 1106 design.com if you know of any authors that are trying to get their book published follow rate review share this episode to as many people as possible.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Jump on your favorite podcast app. Give us a follow. Leave us a review.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>CJackson 10 two is the place to send all of your show suggestions and guest suggestions. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Michelle, thank you for all you do. And thank you for joining us.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Thank you for having me, Curtis. I appreciate it.

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> Curveball>For more information on the living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurvefball.com.

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> Curveball>until next time, uh, stay focused on living the dream.

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> Michelle DeFilippo>Dream.