Month: June 2020

Welcome to Tellwell!

This blog post aims to give new Tellwell contractors and full time employees assistance with getting started. At Tellwell we use two applications extensively, namely

• Slack, a team messaging app, for all internal/team communications
• Octavo, our book production portal, for signing up for new jobs, listing your jobs, uploading deliverables & tracking your earnings.

You will need to log in to both in the course of completing your work. So how do I get started?

Step 1 – Log into Slack
If you have not already received an email inviting you to join Slack, you will receive one shortly. Check your inbox for a message that looks like this:

Click the ‘Join Now’ button

Enter your name, a strong password which you should not share with anyone and click ‘Create Account’ to join the Tellwell Slack channel and say Hi to your new teammates. Slack is very easy to use but if you want some help with getting started click here

Step 2 – Log Into Octavo

Once you have logged into Slack, look in the left side bar for a Direct Message from tellwellbot – this is the bot that Octavo uses to send messages to Slack. Note: Octavo only sends invites once per hour, so if you haven’t received a message, you may need to wait awhile. Once received, click on the tellwellbot name to view the message.

Here you will find a message containing your Octavo login details. Click the link to go to the login page and enter the information provided in the Username and Temporary Password fields to login.

Because you just used a temporary password to login you need to set your own password next. Enter a strong password in this field. Do not share your password with anyone.

Congratulations you’ve logged in to Octavo, depending on your role you will want to check out the job pool for new jobs or your task list for tasks assigned to you next.

When setting your Retail pricing, there are three things to consider;

• your actual book price
• the print cost (determined by number of pages, paper quality and book size)
• and the retailer discount (what the various “middle men” take)

This short blog post will investigate how retailer discount can effect your book.

As you may have noted already, the higher the retailer discount (i.e. the more the retailer takes), the lower your royalties will be.

At Tellwell we offer three strategies for setting your discount as shown below

Maximize My Royalties

For this strategy we will set the discount on each channel we distribute to, to the lowest amount allowed (for print books this is generally 30-35%).

This means you will be offering online retailers the least amount and getting paid the most royalty per book sold.

For the vast majority of online retailers this is acceptable and they will list your book, but some will not, notably Chapters/Indigo who have recently stopped listing books on their website at this discount point.

Maximize My Distribution

If you would like your book listed on Chapters/Indigo website you should select this option. We will set your royalties 5-10% higher than minimum to provide more incentive for retailers to offer your book.

Note: We provide no guarantees that Chapters or any other online retailer will list your book. Listing books is entirely up to each individual company.

Enroll In Book Returns Program

To have your book stocked in a physical book store, you either need to

• make your book returnable (book store can destroy unsold copies) and increase your discount to 55%
• or deal with bookstores yourself on a consignment basis.

We strongly recommend the consignment option paired with selecting one of the first two distribution strategies above. However a few authors do enroll in the book returns program. There is an additional cost for doing this and your royalties will be held until you exit the program (to cover liability for unsold stock). Your Project Manager will contact you if you select this.