Details of Our Program

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Unlike most bookstores on the Internet, at theAlternativeBookShop.com each book is set up as an individual home page.  This provides you the opportunity to personally market your book through submissions to the Internet Search Engines, E-mail, Newsgroups or other methods without requiring your potential customers to navigate through our site and possibly losing your sale.  Click here for an example.  A new Window will open so you will not lose your place in this important document.

Your book's home page will be set-up for $10.  This charge is to help us defray the cost of setup and to discourage those that are not truly sincere about marketing their book.  For each book sold we deduct the normal 40% bookstore commission for sales, and forward your orders to you, with the 60% payment and whatever Shipping and Handling charge you indicate.  We absorb all bank charges on credit-card sales, and assume responsibility for any bad checks.  In addition, we provide, for your convenience, a pre-addressed shipping label so that fulfillment of an order is as simple as inserting the book into a flat-rate U.S. Postage Envelope and sticking on our label.  No bad checks, no dealing with credit cards, no hassle from the customer who purchased your book.  

Special interest note for those of you who already have a WEB site for your books:
The Alternative Book Shop can still provide to you a valuable service even if you currently have a WEB site for your books.  Later in this document, under Alternative Program, we explain a feature that would allow you to collect 100% of your book price and 0% commission for sales.  Also, the Alternative Book Shop can provide secured credit card processing for your WEB site if you are not currently accepting credit cards.  

The Alternative Book Shop has been in business on the Internet since 1996.  It was established by a small publishing company know as PPC Books, Inc. with the goal to provide an outlet for books from Small or Self Publishers.  To this end, the Alternative Book Shop has accomplished its goal by offering over a thousand different books exclusively from Small and Self Publishers.  

Pardon the plug but if you have a book that you would like to publish then hop on over to PPC Books Inc. at www.SelfPublishingServices.com  A new Window will open so you will not lose your place in this document.

Details:

For $10 your book's home page will be setup on our site in the Category of your choice.  Note: Additional Categories or multiple listings are available and this will be explained later in more detail. 

In addition, you will receive by "snail mail" a package that will contain:

• A Guidebook describing how you can promote your book on the Internet through Search Engines, Newsletters and the like.
• A commitment to update your book's home page "metatags", that is based upon information that you provide to us, to help facilitate your ranking in the Internet Search Engines.  Don't fear, if you do not know what "metatags" are you will after you read the above Guidebook.
• How the order fulfillment process works.  You will receive a sample Book Payment, Book Order Receipt and "stick on" mailing label that will illustrate how easy the fulfillment process is.

All books are listed for life or until you tell us to remove them.

What are Categories:

The Alternative Book Store provides Categories that your book can be listed under.  To view the Categories available please click here.  A new Window will open so you do not lose your place in this document.

If you would like your book to be listed in additional Categories (remember your $10 buys you your home page + 1 Category), others are available for $5 extra per Category.

Additional Offers and Promotions:

The following are Options that you may want to consider to help promote your book on our site.  There is no hard sell here. We are simply making them available to you if you are interested:

• Featured New Arrivals - For $15, have your book featured in our new arrivals page for 3 months.
• Featured Specials - For $25 annually, have your book or books listed in our Featured Specials which provides a separate page devoted to your publishing company.
• Book of the Month - Your book can be featured on the Alternative Book Shop's home page as the Book of the Month.  There is a one time charge of $50 for 1 calendar month.  

Alternative Program
Or how to make 100% of the price of your book!

As described earlier we provide to you for a one-time / life-time charge of $10 a home page for your book and a method for you to collect "hassle free" revenue from your book.  Remember, you don't need to be able to take credit cards or run the risk of bad checks --- we do all that for you.  Of course like any store there is a commission on each sale, and as described earlier, ours is 40% of the price of your book.  By the way, this is considerably less then the "big boys", e.g., Amazon, who are getting considerably more.

However, some of you may want to consider the following Alternative Program and get 100% of your price for your book.

If you already have your own web site or home page for your book and you have an Internet enabled way of selling your book and collecting the revenue, we can still help you.

For $50 per year the Alternative Book Shop will do any or all of the above at the stated rates but instead of a customer "clicking to" our secured order process when they wish to buy your book, we will link that customer directly to your site or order process page.  No commissions on the book are taken and it is your responsibility to carry out the collection of the monies and the fulfillment of the order.   

You should keep in mind that having your book listed on more then one Internet site is good business and gives you the opportunity, among others, to perform alternative search engine seeding.  Those of you that have your own Web site for your book or books know that $50, for effectively another home site for your book, is not a bad deal.

The Alternative Book Shop can also provide secured credit card processing for your WEB site or home page for your book.  If you currently have the means to market your books on the Internet but you do not take credit cards, the Alternative Book Shop can still help you.  Instead of losing the sale, your credit card orders can be directed to our secured order form and we will process the credit card order for you.  Of course our 40% commission will prevail on this sale but, 60% of something is better then 100% of nothing. 

In order for us to setup a home page for your book we need to collect some information.  In addition, some of this information may require you to do some off-line work to prepare the materials that are required to get your book on to the Web.  

We have attempted to automate the process of getting your book setup as a home page on the theAlternativeBookShop.com.  However, we have found that personal assistance through E-mail, telephone and yes even "snail mail", can help in allowing us to do a better job at presenting your book on the WEB.  Please keep in mind that this personal service costs you absolutely nothing over the rates that were presented earlier.  We urge you to take advantage of this free service.  

Summary of Steps to Get Your Book Listed:

1. Fill in demographic information - name, address, phone, email address, title of book, publisher, ISBN#, sales price, shipping and handling fee desired, etc., on the Form you saw earlier.
2. Select the category or categories that you want your book listed under.
3. Selection of any Optional or Alternative Programs.
4. Submit Form to us for processing.  You will hear from us by return E-mail by the next business day.
5. After your have submitted the Form, prepare the promo / review of your book, similar to the back cover or jacket flap of your book.
6. After you have submitted the Form, provide to us the cover of your book.

Detail of Steps to Get Your Book Listed:

The Form:

1.       Fill in demographic information:

About You - self-explanatory

         About Your Book

• Title: Test Title
• Author: Test Author
• Publisher: Test Publishing Corp.
• Form: Paperback
• Illustrated: ---
• Number of Pages: 232
• ISBN: 0-9636698-0-X
• Price: $0.01 + $0.00 Shipping = $0.01

2.       Fill in the Category that you want your book listed under.

Your $10 gets your book listed in one Category.  Optionally, your book can be listed in additional Categories for a one-time charge of $5 each. One Category (the free one) must be listed on the Form.  Click Categories to see the list of Categories available.

If you do not see an appropriate Category for your book then we can add new Categories for you for an additional charge of $25 per Category.  

3.       Selection of any Optional or Alternative Programs:

Please check off any of the Optional or Alternative Programs that were described earlier that you may be interested in.  

4.       Submit From to us for processing:

Click Submit to send the Form to us for processing.  You will hear back from us via E-mail by the next business day.  The purpose of the the Form is to collect as much information as possible, get the ball rolling and establish a "friendly" dialogue with you.  The most critical item on the Form is your E-mail address.  PLEASE make sure that it is correct so we CAN get back to you.

When you submit the Form, the $10 fee to list your book will be charged to the Credit Card that you provide.  No additional charges will be applied until we confirm with you any Options or Alternative Programs that you may have requested.

Please note: we reserve the right to reject a book from being listed on our site and your $10 payment will be credited back to your Credit Card.

After You Have Submitted the Form:

5.       Prepare the Promo / Review of Your Book:

The promo / review of your book is similar to the back cover or jacket flap of your book.  Your promo / review material should be fully-composed using Word (Microsoft), Word Perfect (Corel), WordPro (Lotus), WordPad, RTF (Rich Text Format), HTML or most other rudimentary word processors. After we get back to you, you will need to E-mail that file to us as an attachment.  If you do not know how to that then we will help you.

Alternatively, you can mail to us a printed, typed or floppy version of your promo / review to the address shown below.  Sorry but Fax is not a good alternative since it is difficult to replicate your promo / review electronically from a Fax.  

If you want us to compose the promo / review material for you, there is an additional $50 charge.

Some Hints:

·         You may want to browse through our site and look at other books that match or are similar to your book's Category.  Clicking here will open up a new browser window that will list our Categories and allow you to look at other books.  For an example of a simple promo / review click here, for a more complex one, click here.

·         Think of your promo / review as the back cover, or jacket flap, of your book—where browsers look to determine their interest. The following might also be considered:

·         Selecting a particularly representative, meaningful, or teasing excerpt to reproduce

·         Adding testimonial quotes from reviewers or fellow authors, if available

·         Including anecdotal highlights from your book’s history (i.e., “First printing sold out!”, etc.)

6.       Your book cover:

A  JPEG or GIF graphics file is required in order for us to be able to display your book's cover.  After we get back to you, you will need to E-mail that file to us as an attachment.  If you do not know how to that then we will help you.  If your book's cover is currently being displayed in another on-line bookstore or your own home page you can provide to us the URL for the JPEG or GIF file.  In most cases, we would be able to download your book cover to our site.

Alternatively, you can mail to us the cover of your book and we will scan it and create for you the appropriate JPEG or GIF file.  There is no additional charge for this service.  Sorry but Fax is not a good alternative since it is not in color and would make for a poor presentation.  

Based upon how quickly the above can be gathered and agreed to, it usually takes one week to get your book listed on our site.

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