BUSINESS
Right: Tony and Yvonne Rose present a collection of their published works.
Assisting the authors The mission of Quality Press is straightforward. As Yvonne put it: “You present us with a manuscript, and we will present you with a final book.” A set fee of $800 provides an aspiring author: proofreading, layout, formatting and a book cover. Yvonne and her team of independent proofreaders, editors and others assist with the necessary registration and copyright procedures. But it all begins with the basics. “We need to make it presentable and that starts with proofreading,” she noted. “Every manuscript that comes to us is going to be proofread. If you refuse that, we generally won’t work with you. If this is your dream, we will work with you one way or another, but we’re not going to give you a piece of crap.” Helping people — an estimated 6,500 authors — is what keeps Yvonne motivated after more than two decades on the job, she said. “We work more with newbies, people who need our expertise,” she remarked. “We’ve turned down some celebrities. With the new authors, we create a lot of joy for so many people. We get the manuscript, and we do it all. That’s why I like the packaging part of the business. We see results quicker and we can reach more people.” Yvonne, the once-reluctant author, has ghostwritten or co-written several bestselling nonfiction titles. One stood out in her memory.
TALKING BOOKS
books because they wanted to leave a legacy.” Inflation and rising costs mean most of today’s books are paperback and black-and-white. The average page count is 150, with Yvonne encouraging new authors with longer tomes of more than 400 pages to split their work into a two-part series. The reason: Customers are not likely to pay the $30 premium for such a book, she said. Popular book themes
are Christian works, self-help and how-to guides, and devotionals and memoirs, Yvonne said. Prison inmates often want to share their stories with Yvonne, who said their work is the most challenging to package due to limited language skills, although the stories themselves can be quite captivating. Average sales for a first-time author are 250 copies, according to the company.
Thanks to the internet, Quality Press now works with authors from around the world. Domestically, most clients are in Georgia, New York, California and Illinois, among the most prominent American Black cultural epicenters. Author ages have ranged from a 12-year-old boy with a cartoon coloring book to “many seniors in their 90s who have written
STATE OF THE CITY MAYOR NANCY SMITH
maricopa-az.gov/events
JANUARY 29, 2025 | DESERT SUNRISE HIGH SCHOOL 5 PM RECEPTION | 6 PM MAYOR’S ADDRESS
InMaricopa.com | December 2024
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