Recently, BookVault—a company familiar to many of our U.S. and U.K. listeners—expanded its print-on-demand services to Australia. In this episode, ALLi’s nonfiction advisor Anna Featherstone speaks with Alex Smith, BookVault’s brand manager, to learn what the company offers, how it operates globally, and whether it might be a good fit for authors looking to diversify how they produce and distribute their books.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- What BookVault is, which countries it currently serves, and how it compares to KDP, IngramSpark, and traditional book printers
- How special editions work—costs, timelines, trends, and possibilities
- The most common mistakes authors make with POD, and how to avoid them
- Why BookVault charges a setup fee—and how ALLi members can have it waived
- A crash course on bookbinding types: perfect bound, case bound, and saddle stitch
- Trends and innovations in indie publishing that have Alex excited about the future
Listen to the Podcast: Expanding Book Distribution with BookVault’s Global POD Services
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Now, go write and publish!
Sponsors
This podcast is proudly sponsored by Bookvault. Sell high-quality, print-on-demand books directly to readers worldwide and earn maximum royalties selling directly. Automate fulfillment and create stunning special editions with BookvaultBespoke. Visit Bookvault.app today for an instant quote.
This podcast is also sponsored by Gatekeeper Press, the all-inclusive Gold Standard in Publishing, offering authors 100% rights, royalties, satisfaction and worldwide distribution. Gatekeeper Press, Where Authors are Family.
About the Host
Anna Featherstone is ALLi’s nonfiction adviser and an author advocate and mentor. A judge of The Australian Business Book Awards and Australian Society of Travel Writers awards, she’s also the founder of Bold Authors and presents author marketing and self-publishing workshops for organizations, including Byron Writers Festival. Anna has authored books including how-to and memoirs and her book Look-It’s Your Book! about writing, publishing, marketing, and leveraging nonfiction is on the Australian Society of Authors recommended reading list. When she’s not being bookish, Anna’s into bees, beings, and the big issues of our time.
About the Guest
Alex Smith has been with Printondemand Worldwide, the parent company of BookVault, for more than seven years. During that time, he has gained extensive knowledge of the publishing industry. His experience positioned him to take a leading role in redeveloping the BookVault platform. Alex works closely with leading indie publishing entrepreneurs to ensure BookVault continues to deliver the innovative features authors and publishers need.
Read the Transcripts
Anna Featherstone: Welcome writers. Hello to you, wherever you are, on this gorgeous spinning ball we call home. I'm Anna Featherstone, author, mentor, and ALLi's non-fiction advisor. I'm coming to you today from the east coast of Australia on the unceded lands of the remarkable original storytellers of this place, the Birpai people.
I'm a bit excited today because I don't know much about the company we're going to be discussing, which means I might be like a lot of you. So, recently a company called Book Vault, which I know more US and UK listeners would be familiar with, they've also begun offering services in Australia.
I'm a complete newbie to the offering, so it doesn't really matter where you are in the world, this podcast we might all learn a little from as we learn a bit more about Book Vault and how or if they might fit in with the way you choose to produce your books.
So, this podcast, as normal, it's general information only, so always do your due diligence to see if any service discussed fits your needs and can fulfil what you're looking for.
But I'm very excited to learn more.
So, today we're welcoming Alex Smith, Book Vault's brand Manager. Welcome, Alex.
Alex Smith: Hello, how are you?
Anna Featherstone: So, good and very excited to be learning from someone. Now, you've been with the company for a while. Tell us how long ago you started with Book Vault.
Alex Smith: I've been with the company for, it's very close to eight years, so eight years in July.
I started off as an apprentice and have worked my way up and now the brand manager for Book Vault. It's been quite a journey. I've never been in books, came straight from school into a printer, didn't know the wonderful world of printing, and now I'm stuck.
Anna Featherstone: There could be worse places to be stuck.
Alex Smith: Exactly, yeah. No, it's a fascinating industry.
Anna Featherstone: Oh, amazing. So, what kind of books do you enjoy reading?
Alex Smith: To be honest, up until a couple of years ago, I was scared of books because I dealt with them all day and every day. But just recently, I went to a conference in Florence last year, and I met Michael Wright, an author, and I've been really into his books, been hooked historical fiction about kind of World War II and the Holocaust, and things like that.
A very deep read, but it's really interesting. But as well, to make it a bit brighter, I'm a big F1 fan, so there's plenty of books about that as well.
A real mix of genres there.
Anna Featherstone: Exactly, and I love that. That keeps life interesting.
Book Vault's Global Operations
Anna Featherstone: So, what countries is Book Vault operating in now?
Alex Smith: At present we've got our main UK hub, so that's where I work above the factory in the UK. It's a place called Peterborough, which is about an hour north of London, but then we also work with a variety of partners as well. So, we've got now four partners in the US. So, they're spread around the country offering different capabilities there.
Then we've just recently this year launched a partnership in Australia, which obviously I know you're very excited about, and also a partnership in Canada as well. So, the whole plan is to offer these different partnerships in different countries to help with local fulfilment and distribution as well.
Anna Featherstone: Okay. So, you're tapping into already established printers, but also bringing in what you do and upskilling them as well, is that right?
Alex Smith: Exactly that, yeah. So, as a company, I know we're fairly new to the indie author scene, but we've been going for 30 years this year. So, we generally worked with traditional publishers in the UK. So, it's been going longer than I have, which is always scary to think, but we've been working with kind of more academic publishers.
So, when I first started, you'd go down to the production floor and it would be hundreds of textbooks, all with different spots and rashes, and it was disgusting. Whereas now we're actually printing some pretty fancy books. So, it's nice.
Unique Services and Direct Sales
Anna Featherstone: So, how would you describe Book Vault and the services that you offer?
Alex Smith: So, we are obviously a traditional print-on-demand printer. So, we take the files, print them on demand as and when they're needed, and as I say, we have those four different countries that we print and distribute from.
But we came into the indie scene and wanted to do it a little bit differently. Obviously, the likes of Ingram and Amazon are very well established. They're very much on the distribution model of you give them your books and they sell worldwide for you.
We've been dealing with a lot of publishers, and they have their features, which maybe aren't available to the indie market. So, we wanted to launch it a little bit differently with, initially, direct selling.
So, the big rise of direct selling for authors of having their own website and it seamlessly plugging in and sending the books directly to the readers. We launched it with a direct sales app, so you can link your Shopify store, your WooCommerce store, and your Wix store automatically and we'll print and fulfil the books.
But then a big thing we noticed a gap for was bespoke books as well. So, where you've got your shiny foil, your sprayed edges on the edge of your books and things like that. So, we have also built that in on a single copy basis. So, as an author, you can get a fancy book that publishers can get very easily and do hundreds and thousands of runs, we can print you a single copy off and send it direct to your reader at, it's a little bit more than if you were to order a thousand, but it's still an affordable price for you.
Anna Featherstone: And I suppose it just makes it possible for an indie author to access that.
So, what would you say you're currently best known for?
Alex Smith: I think up until very recently when we launched bespoke has always been direct sales. So, that was a big thing that we noticed a bit of a gap for. We'd already worked with a lot of publishers building into their websites and fulfilling it orders.
So, yeah, we're well known for direct selling. So, as I mentioned before, if you've got your own Shopify store, there's the app market where you can install various apps for all different things. We have our own Book Vault app on those platforms. You install that, link your products up to say, if this book is bought, I want it to fulfil this print book. Very similar to how you would with BookFunnel. We then upload the shipping rates to the platform as well. So, the customer pays what the author would pay for shipping, and then as soon as that writer pays for the book, we automatically take that order, send it to the relevant printer, print and ship it directly to the customer.
Then we also give the customer the tracking information. So, it's all very seamless.
As a writer, all you need to do is install the plugin, keep an eye on it, but it would generally work without you touching it.
Anna Featherstone: Okay, so you are acting like that whole backend, so the author doesn't need to wrap the book themselves.
Alex Smith: Exactly, yeah. You don't need your garage full or your basement full of tons and tons of books. As those orders come in, we print and ship them on demand. So, it's exactly the same as what you'd expect if you're selling your books on Amazon, but instead it's through your own store and you're earning a little bit more money as well.
Anna Featherstone: Does the author get to retain the customer details?
Alex Smith: Yes, exactly that. So, as the printer, all we are doing is the same as if you were to place an order on our platform to yourself. We are just taking that customer's address and sending it to them. You retain all their details. You can build up more of a marketing database for your readers, and equally you retain all the profit, minus the print costs as well. So, it's a much better way, a more profitable way of doing it.
Anna Featherstone: What about if an author wanted to include something in the package, like a signed book plate, is that possible?
Alex Smith: Not at the moment, but it's a very hot topic. We went to the Future of Publishing Mastermind back in February and I had a little tally of everyone that was asking about signed book plates, and I lost count towards the end of it. So, it is something we're working quite hard on because it's a big thing that a lot of people want, and that's the whole thing that we are really focusing on.
We are quite an in innovative company and I'm a developer myself. We've got a team of developers that we hear stuff and then go away and work on it, and that's how we want to move as a company. We don't want to be stuck in the traditional way of, if it's not on the checklist, you can't do it. We'll try and work a way of doing it.
Anna Featherstone: Okay. So, what kind of authors are using Book Vault?
Alex Smith: It really is a wide range. So, we've got authors that are publishing their first book and using us for initial proof runs or to send ARC copies, and then we're going to well established authors. We've got Joanna Penn in on Wednesday doing her most recent Kickstarter. We've worked with Sacha as well from ALLi. Various, well established, high selling authors as well. So, it really is that range.
What we generally find is we do offer distribution, so we can sell your book on Amazon, and we can sell your book on various retailers, but that's not our strongest point. We say it works best for you to use it in combination with other platforms.
We kind of work well with authors and doing more of the direct sales kind of things.
Anna Featherstone: Okay. So, let's go back a little bit.
Special Editions and Bespoke Books
Anna Featherstone: You earlier talked about special editions. So, paint us a picture of what you guys can do.
Alex Smith: So, we noticed a massive gap in the market with special editions. People can do them very easily. We invested, probably now adding it all up, about half a million pounds in kit.
So, we now offer very basic options. So, you can have your ribbon bookmarks, or we call them head and tail bands, so little stitching along the spine of the book so you can't see the glue. Printed end papers, so when you open a hardback book, normally you'll see like a blank sheet, you can print whatever design you want on the front and back of that as well.
Then we go into more of the kind of specialist items as well. So, we've got a foiling. So, you can have foiling on a jacket of a book. You can have it on the case bound, on the paperback, on the spiral bound and then sprayed edges as well.
We have a machine that you effectively put a book in, and it prints on the side of the pages, so you can upload whatever design you want, or you can just have a solid color and it'll print directly on the side of that book.
Then the big thing we launched a couple of months ago is box sets as well. So, it's an actual physical box that you can put a series or even just a single book as a slip case all in. And again, it's printed on demand from a single copy, so there's no minimum order quantities or anything like that.
Anna Featherstone: Oh, so you're actually printing the box?
Alex Smith: Yes. So, you can design whatever you want on that box, and we'll print it and send it out to the customer or yourself.
Anna Featherstone: Wow. So, that all sounds lovely, but the technical side of getting the design to work with your systems, how does that work?
Alex Smith: What effectively you do is you set up the title on Book Vault, and it's a good plug to mention there. So, normally there's a title upload fee and we've done that to stop people effectively using the platform for low-content books. So, we had someone upload 20,000 notebooks, all with different pictures of kittens on one weekend, and it absolutely crashed our system. So, we introduced that upload fee, but then we work with people like ALLi. So, if you go on to the ALLi member benefits on the portal, there's unlimited title upload, so we don't even need to talk about that. As an ALLi member, that's completely waived.
You set up the specifications, so you say how big your book is, how many pages, what you want on it, and then you get to a file upload page, and on that file upload page, you can download all the templates. So, we've got guides on how to set them up and the templates are sized exactly how your book is meant to be. You can either give it to your cover designer or design it yourself.
The big thing is as well, we focus a lot on customer services. If you do have any problems, you can either arrange a meeting, you can book a meeting online with us, or you can reach out via email, and we'll be able to assist you too. Obviously, we can't design it for you. I don't think you'd want me designing a cover for you to be honest, but we can certainly help point you in the right direction.
Anna Featherstone: How many options are there for the size of the book people can have?
Alex Smith: I do have a number, but I've forgotten it off the top of my head. Clearly, I haven't had enough coffee this morning, but it's literally any size between A6 and 297 x 297. We don't have set SKUs; you can literally define whatever size you want.
There was one at the weekend, on Friday, that was a massive spine, a big square book with foil and sprayed edges and everything on it.
We are probably one of the most flexible POD printers out there, and the fact that you define what size you want the book to be, we don't have those set sizes.
Anna Featherstone: Okay.
Common Mistakes and Best Practices
Anna Featherstone: So, for us indie authors, because often we are working on so many different types of projects and when you have so many choices, it's easy for us to go down a few different paths and get ourselves into a bit of trouble. So, what kind of mistakes do you see authors making or having trouble with when it comes to this kind of deciding on their books and designing them and all that?
Alex Smith: I think there's a couple of things we see. Number one, and the big one as a printer is people not ordering proofs. So, we see a lot of people where they'll upload their files without having seen it printed before, or maybe not using us, as every printer's got slightly different variances. If you go to an offset printer, an offset printer being one that does 1000, 2000, 3000+ books, they'll generally have a lot more color control because they're letting it run and they print off one, check the color consistency, and then let the whole project run.
With POD printing and short run printing, we generally use digital presses, so they're smaller machines, but they're a lot more flexible, so you can quite easily change the paper and things like that.
So, what generally happens is our printer may be another brand, and the printer you normally use uses a different brand and they handle colors slightly differently. So, getting a proof is really important for consistency and to make sure you're happy.
Equally, we see a few people that maybe think that their book is one size, and it isn't. So, we have validation software. So, when you upload your file, it says whether it's the right size or wrong size, but we also crop stuff when it gets to a close enough size. So, it might be quite close to the edge, and it trims into it or things like that. So, number one definitely is a proof.
We've seen people do runs of 100-200 and when it comes off the press and we see it on the edge and we're like, no, and we have to deal with that.
But equally, we mentioned about custom sizes as well. Generally, we offer it and it's there if you need it, but try and stick to standard sizes. We've seen people do all sorts of wacky and wonderful sizes, which look well towards the design, but when your reader's got it on their bookshelf and they've got one random book sitting higher than the rest, or sticking out more than the others, it's something you've got to be conscious of.
Anna Featherstone: That's interesting because we like to stick out, but not in that way.
Alex Smith: Yes, exactly. Sticking out is a good thing but maybe focus on the design and the height of the book.
Anna Featherstone: Yeah, and what you were saying about getting proofs, from my own experience, I always get a proof because you just never know the color of the paper till you see it or how the cover feels, and it's just such an important step.
I use proofs as well to just pick up last minute errors. I just really believe in proofs, so I'm glad that you do too.
Alex Smith: Yes, a hundred percent.
As I say, for us, all you do on the platform is so you can place orders to wherever you want to go. So, you just add the title to your account, upload the files, and then order a copy to yourself. It's as simple as that. There's no proof process or anything like that. You just order it to your own house or to wherever it needs to go.
Anna Featherstone: When you've got all these different options and choices, and it's not just printing necessarily a book, what period of time do you suggest authors add to their production timeline for a special edition book?
Alex Smith: For a special edition, at the moment, I would say around 10 to 15 working days. So, it's a bit longer. Generally, we like to produce books in three to five days. In some cases we can do it in one or two, but generally we say three to five.
With bespoke books, because there's a lot more things that we need to do, we generally say at the moment, 10 to 15. However, there is a massive drive internally to bring that down. We want to bring it down to five working days, I feel like it will probably end up being more around seven, but we have been on a bit of a journey with bespoke. We launched it this time last year, and every time we get in a good place and add more capacity and get it so that we can kind of print stuff in a five working day period, everyone notices that we're working so quickly and orders 10 times more.
It's been one of those journeys, but we've this year doubled our production capacity. We're hopefully getting a lot more kit in this year as well to help with that, because as a business we've grown massively as well, which is fantastic.
We want it to be so that you can sell bespoke books the same as you would sell normal books, and then a lot more in the process.
Anna Featherstone: So, obviously those kinds of bespoke books and special editions, they're going to cost more. What are we looking at if someone wants the foil or the sprayed edges, or both compared to just a normal book?
Alex Smith: One thing to note with special editions, at the moment we only fulfil them from our UK facility, but we do ship worldwide. So, it's one of those ones that we are working with other partners, but we're in quite a unique position. The reason why people haven't done it print-on-demand in the past is because not very many printers can do it print-on-demand.
So, that's why we're focusing on our UK hub and then shipping them worldwide, but we can ship to Australia, US, Canada from the UK.
Anna Featherstone: So, that would add a cost straight up just for that shipping?
Alex Smith: Yeah, it would. But then for instance, it's all granular. So, you would have the same price that it would be to print your normal, say, six by nine mono paperback or hardback. You then add the bespoke items onto it. So, for instance, foiling is £3. So, to add foiling on the front would be £3, and that's as much foil as you want. We're not going to charge you per millimeter square of gold or something like that. It's very simply £3 for that.
Sprayed edges, because of the processes involved, that adds £6 per copy.
Then things like printed end papers, head and tail bands, and ribbons or £1 each. So, you don't pay a slight fee for it being a bespoke book, you pay for what you want on it.
But what we have seen is people adding, say, £10 worth of special edition features onto their book and selling it for, instead of say, £10 or £9.99, selling it for £70, because it's not about selling to the masses. It's about targeting those superfans that will die for your book and want your book on their shelf, maybe not even to read it. They'll get the normal edition to read it and break the spine and whatever they do to the book. They just want it to sit on the shelf because you're their favorite author and they want to display your work.
Anna Featherstone: From what you are seeing, are those kinds of books being produced for Kickstarter or just for direct sales to super fans?
Alex Smith: I would say mainly Kickstarter, but actually the past couple of weeks we've seen some really successful Shopify/WooCommerce store launches as well.
So, we've seen people selling, I think we had one the other day that sold 400-500 copies in a weekend on launch, just from a mailing list and social media pushing people to their stores.
I would've said Kickstarter if we'd had this podcast a couple of weeks ago, but no, you can sell them wherever you feel. It's wherever you have your audience really. So, if you've done a lot of successful Kickstarter projects, it helps having that kind of Kickstarter backer history. But if you've got a really successful store and a big mailing list and good social media presence, you can just send them directly to your store and fulfil them that way as well.
Anna Featherstone: A little while ago, you mentioned low-content books, can you explain for people who don't understand, what is a low content book and also what are you seeing in that space and what do authors need to look out for?
Alex Smith: Yeah. So, low-content books are more kind of your workbooks, your notepads. There's, I guess in my view, two segments of those sort of people. There's people that are making workbooks to compliment their other work, so we see a lot of people doing a workbook around their book that they're selling. If they're selling kind of self-help books, the workbook helps complement that book in terms of asking questions around the content, and we've seen people do, if they're selling direct a notebook related around the content they're writing.
I was at the Global Publishing Summit a couple of weeks ago and someone was writing a notebook around a spell book in their book. So, it really compliments it, and if you're selling direct, you can up that average sale price by selling additional content along with your books.
Then the other camp is more where people are trying a get rich, quick scheme of selling notebooks with different pictures of cats on because someone on social media they'd earn £10,000 a month by selling them.
Anna Featherstone: Oh, those Facebook ads? Yes, I see them.
Alex Smith: Yeah, mine hasn't kicked off yet, sadly, all the cats.
We are happy for anyone to print with our platform, but we want it to be people that want to sell. They're not just uploading some books to Amazon and hoping that they sell, and everyone's going to find their book about a random kitten amongst the millions of books about kittens. It's all about more targeted low-content books. We don't have a problem with them, and that's why we added that upload fee to try and make it for people that are committed to trying to sell books as well.
Distribution and Partnerships
Anna Featherstone: So, with the distribution side, how are you different to Amazon KDP or Ingram Spark? Why would we use Book Vault for distribution?
Alex Smith: So, distribution wise, the one important thing to say is we're non-exclusive. So, you can use us in conjunction with Ingram and KDP, and various other platforms because we feel like you should use as many people as you can to try and reach as many markets as you can.
What we are good for, and a lot of people use us for, we have our own retailer called the Great British Bookshop. I guess what we call it is a middle ground between direct sales and distribution. So, it's our own store. We are making the money off printing your books, so effectively we are allowing offers to sell their books as they would on Amazon, but we give them a much higher percentage earning. So, if you sell on the Great British Bookshop, you earn 90% minus the print costs. So, we take 10% fees for the credit card transaction fees and things like that, and then 90% of that minus the print cost is what you would earn as compensation.
Equally we pay that out in 30 days as well. So, it's a much quicker payout rate. So, it's one of those, if you can't set up your direct sales store or don't want the hassle of it, it's a way of directing readers to that store and earning more than you would traditionally selling on Amazon.
Anna Featherstone: So, how do you actually get or an audience to your store?
Alex Smith: At the moment, it's very much driven by the authors that we have on the platform. So, a lot of people direct people to their sales pages or their author pages and things like that, but it is, as I say, one of those that we are very much focusing on being an interim to direct sales.
So, if you don't want the hassle of dealing with tax, or the accountant doesn't want you to set up your own store, it's a way of you directing people to a platform that isn't Amazon and earning more money from each sale of your book from that side of things.
Anna Featherstone: So, authors in America and Canada and Australia can also list their books on that site?
Alex Smith: Yes, exactly that and it ships worldwide from our partners. As I say, we've grown very quickly.
So, that is something that's in the development plan. The Great British Bookshop worked very well for us when we were a UK-focused company.
Now we're doing more worldwide, we are sorting out the branding and changing that store. But that's a worldwide store and ships worldwide there.
Then as I mentioned, we also work with a select handful of retailers as well. So, we get your book on the Amazon platforms. We get it on various other kind of aggregators. We work with Baker and Taylor, who are one of our printers in the US. They handle the distribution there via their Connect program. We also work with few aggregators in the UK, payback bookshop and various others to get into things like Gardeners. So, in the UK bookstores go through Gardeners.
And then coming very soon this year, we've got a wider distribution plan. We are already beta testing a distributor in India, one in South Africa, and then one in Brazil as well. So, that's building more of those pieces to give more of a better worldwide distribution platform.
Printing Options and Recommendations
Anna Featherstone: Okay, so I'm going to dig into a bit of your printing background, seeing that's how you started.
For a lot of authors starting off with their first book and getting it printed, the whole thing about perfect bound, case bound or saddle stitch. When you bind a book, what do you recommend people start with or what's the most popular?
Alex Smith: I would say probably the easiest one to get going with is paperback because you are all perfect bound. It's quite a simple binding in the fact that you've got your cover. Generally, what on your cover file is what's going to get printed, and it's quite a low cost, simple wraparound of the text effectively.
Saddle stitch you mentioned, so that is where, instead of it being a spine being glued, it's more of a booklet in the fact that you've got the staples in the middle there. That works quite well for low page counts. So, we see it work quite well for graphic novels or little comics or novellas as well, some people use them for.
But once you get over, I would say 30-40 pages, it gets to the point where it won't lay flat and it sits open, and that's not really ideal.
So yeah, perfect bound is where I would say to start, and the big thing we're about is obviously earning more money from your book. It's all about how you use your intellectual property and selling it in as many formats as you can. So, once you're happy with your paid back and you've got a bit more experience, then maybe look at doing a case bound. That's where you've got your hardback book with more of the heavy kind of cover there.
They're a little bit more complex in the fact of when you have your cover file, some of it will wrap round into the inside and round the edges and it's slightly bigger than your text. So, it takes a little bit, and we'd always recommend working with a designer who exactly know what they're doing. But they're a bit more complex, that's why we say to maybe do that as a second or to compliment your paperback book. But you can sell them for a higher price, which is obviously the name of the game.
Anna Featherstone: In the same style of questioning, what about GSM? How do people work out the thickness of their paper? What's ideal?
Alex Smith: To work out the size of your book, we have a sizing calculator on our quote tool. So, even without creating an account, you can work out the size of your book and get those going before you've even created an account.
In terms of which paper to use, we have two, I guess, trade style papers. So, we've got the 70 cream, which is similar to what you get on KDP. Then we have 80 GSM bond, which is like a white paper, and that's very similar to what you would get in your printer at home to print letters on. Both of those work really well in terms of the transparency and whether you can see words behind them and things like that.
We also in Book Vault, offer a lot more specialty papers, so we have some more coated papers. What that means is they've got more of a matte or gloss finish to them. What that does is, if you're doing color, for instance, so children's books, it brings out the color a lot more and makes it more vibrant.
The joyful thing I mentioned earlier with Book Vault is, if you are struggling, reach out to the team. We've obviously got a library of 3-4 million books now. So, we've seen what works really well. So, if you have any questions, either by email or video call, we'll be able to help.
If you see us at an event as well, we also have a little swatch of all the different papers so you can feel and write on them, and things like that. So, you're not on your own, where we're always here to help.
Anna Featherstone: When you just mentioned 4 million books, now I'm thinking, ooh, tell me about a couple that you were like, oh my gosh, this book looks so cool.
Alex Smith: All the bespoke books, we were so impressed. When we launched it, we were a bit nervous about, it's going to take a couple of months for people to get up to speed and get their books looking good. Within a couple of days, we were having some really fantastic covers. I think people have been sat there waiting for us to launch it.
Nora Ash has done a book, we take it to a lot of events, it's on our Instagram, and the gold foiling is so fine, but it works and compliments the cover so well. Then underneath the jacket, she's also got some more foiling as holographic, which you don't expect, but it is there and it's really nice. There's a lot of really cool books.
Amy Campbell, as well. She's done some really nice dragon inspired books and inside them you've got different full color page spreads of the dragons, and then in each chapter heading, you've got different pictures of the scenes as well. It's really nice.
I've picked two there, but there's so many to choose from now. It's nice. Not just books about spots. As I said earlier, it's much nicer to have some actual nice-looking books.
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. What are the interesting things you are now seeing in this space and what are you getting excited about for the future?
Future of Print Books
Anna Featherstone: What's actually possible? Where do you see print books going?
Alex Smith: For us, and this is what we are pushing towards this year, it's less about just your print book, it's more about the experience and the package that you build for your readers.
So, you can keep selling the traditional trade books at a low RRP, you're making a smaller margin. What we're seeing more people do is your Kickstarter and direct sales, and not just selling a book, but selling a book with character art, stickers, bookmarks, mugs, all inspired around the story. And instead of selling the book for £9.99, they're selling a £60, £70, £80, £90 pound or $90 bundle.
So, what we are pushing for, we've just invested in some new machinery and we've been doing it with our sister business, we've got a company called Photo Bubble, which is like a Snapfish competitor where we're doing mugs and t-shirts and things like that, it's bringing those two brands together so that we can offer people to print their book and also their mug, t-shirt, bookmarks, all in one package and send it directly to the customer.
So, at the moment, authors are having to either do it themselves at their kitchen table, or they're having to order from here and pay three lots of shipping. So, it's all about bringing that one thing together and making that experience for the reader but then earning more from that sale as well.
Anna Featherstone: Yeah, you've obviously seen my kitchen table. Bookmarks from somewhere here and then something else from somewhere.
What is something you'd like to leave people with when they're thinking about choosing a printer for their book?
Alex Smith: I think the thing that we really like to focus on is quality. When you look at the price, generally our pricing sits on par or actually below Ingram Spark, and then slightly more than KDP. The reason for that is because we want to put more ink on paper, we want to use more quality paper, and we want to produce a book that will be nice for the reader.
Obviously, you do get very good books from those guys, but we want to make sure that the quality you receive is the highest possible we can. So, it's not so much about price, it's also about what that reader is receiving.
When you look at doing direct sales as well, you've got to think that you're not hidden behind Amazon, you are your own brand and people are buying from you and they're going to be reaching out with customer service to you as well. So, it's all about that balance between finding a good quality printer and also a good cost printer as well.
Anna Featherstone: And where can people actually find more about Book Vault?
Alex Smith: We've got our website, which is bookvault.app. You can also find us on social media under @BookVault as well. On that platform you can find more about our services mentioned. You can book a meeting, so if you want to have more of an introductory call and find out how we can help you, and then also we've got our quoting tool as well.
As I mentioned before, if you want to look at doing bespoke books or print a few books with this, without creating an account you can set up a quote and work out how much it will cost before you get going.
Anna Featherstone: If you were going to write a book, Alex, what would you write it about?
Alex Smith: You've put me on the spot there. I'm quite a techie guy I do a lot of stuff with computers and things like that. I've always wanted to do like a book about those, tutorials and things I've learned over the years, but finding the time is one of those other things. I'm very much more of a writing code than writing books kind of person.
Anna Featherstone: Oh, that's all right, we'll keep you helping produce all our books.
We really appreciate your time today. I have a much better understanding now of what Book Vault does and is. Any last words for anyone out there?
Alex Smith: Feedback, that's the big thing that we strive on. We wouldn't have done the spoke books if people didn't ask for it. We wouldn't have done this if people didn't ask for it. Sadly, in some cases we'll have to say no, but try it, try and see whether we can do it and where we can help as well. So, don't be afraid to reach out.
Anna Featherstone: It's a bit of a challenge, isn't it; to see, can you adapt or create something new?
Alex Smith: As a company, our owner, Andy Cook, he has always been a yes man. So, when I first started, we'd get the traditional publishers asking if he can do it. He'll say yes and then come to us and say, yeah, we've agreed to do this, and we all run around with our hands on our heads and try to work out how we're going to do it. But it's enabled us to adapt to where we are and offer what we do. So, it's a good mentality as a printer to have.
Anna Featherstone: Yeah, that's so cool. Thanks Alex and thank you to all you listeners out there as well, tuning in to skill up and soaking all there is to learn about indie publishing. I'm Anna Featherstone for ALLi, and I look forward to joining you again next time. Again, thanks Alex for explaining it so well.
