Frequently Asked Questions
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- What Is McDougal & Associates?
- Who Are the “Associates” in McDougal & Associates?
- How Can You Become an Associate of McDougal & Associates?
- What Are You Getting for Your Money when You Choose to Publish through McDougal & Associates?
- How Can You Relate the $1,099.00 Publishing Package Offered by McDougal & Associates to the Cost of the Individual Services?
- What Specific Services Can McDougal & Associates Offer? And What Do They Cost?
- What Difference Would Professional Editing Help from McDougal & Associates Make with Your Book? And What Would It Cost?
- What Is the McDougal & Associates Tape-to-Book Package?
- What Are the McDougal & Associates Publishing Guidelines?
1. What Is McDougal & Associates?
McDougal & Associates was formed to help spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible in the shortest time possible. Studies have shown that this can be done most effectively with the printed word. We are blessed today to be living in the twenty-first century and to have at our disposal a technological breakthrough in publishing that now makes it possible to publish a book quickly and easily and to order as many or as few copies of that book as necessary at any given time.
At McDougal & Associates, you may order 50 copies of your book, or you may order 50,000, and reordering any number of copies in the future is easy. McDougal & Associates is made up of a group of dedicated servants of the Lord burdened for the Lord’s will in the earth and eager to see His true servants heard everywhere.
Our motive is never money, but His voice. We invite you to compare our prices even with other Christian web publishers. You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that no one can compare with the prices we offer. For instance, we place a surcharge of only 10% over the actual cost of printing. When authors want copies of their book, we partner with on-demand printers here in the U.S. and in other countries to provide the fastest service and best quality, and we take only 10% for our efforts.
In short, McDougal & Associates is here to serve you. Why not become an associate? today?
2. Who Are the “Associates” in McDougal & Associates?
Harold McDougal is the McDougal behind McDougal & Associates. He has been working directly in Christian publishing now for more than forty years, and during that time, has written, ghost written, edited, and/or published more than eight hundred books. He wrote his first book in 1965, more than fifty-five years ago.Aside from working on his own books on an ongoing basis, Harold has had a burden to get other ministries published and has helped hundreds of them to achieve this goal. Among the best known are Ruth Ward Heflin, William A. Ward, Judson Cornwall, Les Brown, Wade Taylor, Charlotte Baker, Cal Pierce, Sandy Kirk, Jamie Lash, and Tim Bagwell. More recently, he has worked on projects for Joshua Mills, Russ Moyer, Jane Lowder, Dennis Leonard, Darryl Brister, Charles Blake, Darlene Bishop and many other well known Christian leaders here in the US and abroad.
The “Associates” in McDougal & Associates are men and women of every race and of many nationalities who have a Rhema word from God for our time and have chosen this venue as a means of having their message heard. You may choose to become an associate too.
3. How Can You Become an Associate of McDougal & Associates? Becoming an associate of McDougal & Associates will give you access to all the services we offer to enhance the quality and saleability of your message and present it to the world in several popular formats. Becoming an associate is twofold:
- After careful consideration, you must choose to publish your book through McDougal & Associates and
- Our editorial board must approve your material as being in keeping with our doctrinal, moral, ethical, and business guidelines. For a short resume of these guidelines, see question 9.
So, what are you waiting for? It’s your time to be heard! To sign up, click here.
4. What Are You Getting for Your Money When You Publish with McDougal & Associates?
Your setup fee of $1,099.00 will pay for the following:
* Some additional costs may apply. Any editorial work needed and actual printing costs are also charged separately.
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5. How Can You Relate the $1,099.00 Publishing Package Offered by McDougal & Associates to the Cost of the Individual Services?
Services Offered and Their Individual Costs
| Professional Typesetting | $599.00 |
| Professional Editorial Evaluation | $159.00 |
| Custom Cover | $449.00 |
| ISBN Provided by us | $39.00 |
| EIN Barcode Included | $39.00 |
| Back Cover Text Polishing | $39.00 |
| Copyrighting | $59.00 |
| Placement on our web site | $59.00 |
| TOTAL | $1,442.00 |
So you receive a package worth $1,442.00 for only $1,099.00. How's that for value?
6. What Specific Services Can McDougal & Associates Offer? And What Do they Cost?
Professional Typesetting: Also known as pagination or page layout, this service places your text into a professional typesetting software with the unique control over spacing, fonts and graphic elements required by printers the world over. An attractive page layout goes a long way to make your book more salable. Until recently, typesetting was one of the most lucrative aspects of publishing, costing $6.00 to $10.00 per page and sometimes more. We have chosen to give our associates a rock-bottom price for this service to enable more servants of Christ to get their message out to the nations.
$599.00
Professional Editorial Evaluation: It always helps to have your writing examined by a third party, a professional, who will examine it for such things as readability, understandability, impact and marketability. Through our editorial evaluations, we offer a no-nonsense view of the material you present us and what it might need to make it flow better and to better impact the reader as you hope it will. Once the evaluation is received, an author may choose to make the needed adjustments him- or herself, seek the help of some friend or ministry associate, or opt to use the professional editorial services of McDougal & Associates. Most publishers charge double or more for this service. We have chosen to do it as a ministry to our associates.$169.00
Custom Cover Designs: To create our custom covers, we have a Spirit-filled graphic designer pray about creating just the right design to match the content and spirit of your book. A proposed design is presented to you, and together we work out the details of a final cover. Traditionally cover artists have charged double or triple for this service. We choose to do it at a rock-bottom price.$449.00
ISBN Assignation and Registration: As your publisher, we are authorized to assign to your work an International Standard Book Number, which we then register with a database that is accessible anywhere books are sold. This makes your book available to booksellers the world over. Our price for ISBN assignation and registration is about a third of what others charge.
$39.00
Copyrighting: We fill out the necessary forms and mail two copies of your finished book, along with the appropriate fee to the Registar of Copyrights. Once the stamped and approved form is returned to us, we then forward it to you for safekeeping.
$59.00
EIN Barcode: The type of barcode used in bookstores is known as an EIN barcode and is required by all major book distributors and most bookstores. If it is absent, either your book is not accepted for distribution at all or an additional charge is made for manually applying a proper coded label.$39.00
Back Cover Text Polishing: The small block of text on the back cover of a book is, arguably, the most important part of the book. It can make or break it with potential readers. For that space, you need something both catchy and meaningful, and our staff can help you develop that needed text, as well as a suitable title, sub-title and author bio (should you choose to use one on the back cover). Our charge is about 40% of what others charge for the same service.$39.00
Optional eBook version: These days, many people love to read from their computers or dedicated eBook readers rather than hold a book in their hands. For those, there can be an e-book format of your material, identical to the printed version. Once you have approved your text for printing, we can prepare your book in the most popular eBook formats. You will receive a copy of the eBook in those formats, and they will also be available for downloading for sale from the web site. Additionally, we can make your eBook available to the largest retailers of eBooks through LSI. * Some additional may fees apply. Hardcover Option: You might want to do a few of your books in hardback for some special occasion or for distribution to special people. A hardcover edition requires different files to be processed and sent to the printer for both text and cover. The hardback edition must bear a different ISBN, and that ISBN must be registered. Our charge for this service is rock bottom. * The cost for printing a hardcover book, of course, is more than that of a standard paperback book. Depending on the number of copies printed, it averages $5 more per copy. Dust Jacket: If you require a dust jacket for your hardback edition, that requires more work on the cover designer’s part because of the flaps and the wraparound feature. New files must be processed and sent to the printer. * Contact us for printing prices for dust covers and laminate hard back covers.Tape, CD or DVD transcriptions: When the material to be turned into a book comes to us in the form of a teaching tape (now CD), we must have someone transcribe it, carefully listening to the message and typing it into the computer, thus creating a digital file that can be edited.
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) Scanning: When material to be turned into a book is already in a written format, but we don’t have the digital file (either it was lost or the disk is no longer readable, etc.), we must scan each page and use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to read it and transform it into a digital file.
Manuscript Changes: In the case that you have not contracted our editorial services and your manuscript require changes before publication, those changes must be made at your expense. Those who contract our editorial services will have several opportunities to make changes. If, after all agreed-upon changes are made, you require still more changes, those changes must be made at your expense. If you are reprinting a previously printed book and you require changes to your manuscript, those changes must be made at your own expense. Even our printing partners charge double what we charge for this service.
Chart and Table Creation and Indexing: If you need charts or tables created for your book or you need the contents to be indexed, these services are charged by the hour.$35.00 per hour
7. What Difference Would Professional Editing Help from McDougal & Associates Make with Your Book? And What Would It Cost?
The professional editorial services we offer can make all the difference in your book. What may have been just another sermon, when properly edited, can become a life-changing message in print. Here’s what we do:
Most books require two stages of editorial assistance, editing and final proofreading.
Editing: Your writing may need only light editing, but most authors require much more—medium to heavy editing. If you, like many, submit raw sermon or teaching transcripts to be turned into a book, that requires heavy editing.
Final Proofreading: No book should go to press without having been thoroughly reviewed by a competent and anointed proofreader. Nothing turns readers off more than simple typographical and/or grammatical errors. If you use our editing services, after you and I are finished adjusting the text, a competent proofreader will review it and make any necessary recommendations. Since there are so many variables in editing, it is impossible to give an upfront cost for each project. What we can promise is that we will give you a quote lower than other Christian publishers are offering and that if the work is entrusted to us, we will treat it with the respect your anointing merits. The cost of proofreading varies a lot from place to place. We offer the best proofreading for the lowest possible price. All of our editing quotes include proofreading, but final proofreading can also be contracted as a separate item for a price of $2 per page.
8. What Is the McDougal & Associates Tape-to-Book Package? Editing someone else’s material without changing it is a special gift. Early in my editing experience, it was recognized by many that I had such a special God-given gift of taking the teaching materials of others and turning them into a book that sounded like that individual. Rather than tear your material apart, make it sound like someone else, and say things you really don’t want to say (as many editors do these days), I can capture your unique style and present your teachings in an orderly way so that the resulting message will bring credit to you and your vision for years to come. The many authors I have worked with have been pleased with the final product.
Our greatest strength, therefore, is being able to take preaching and teaching tapes and turn them into a book. This, again, is done in conjunction with the author so that everyone is happy with the final product. The most successful books we have published were produced in this way.
Here’s how it works: You entrust to us either a digital transcript of your most beloved teachings or the tapes or CDs themselves, and we work to change the material from spoken form (usually addressed to a limited audience) to written form (suitable for all people everywhere). As a general rules, four to six hours of recorded teachings (depending on the length of each tape) can make a very nice book of 150 pages or more.
How much does all this cost? It’s difficult to give an exact estimate for any editing work before seeing the material. Some writing requires only light editing, but most of us need much more help. It’s amazing what a little editing can do. With a little reorganization, the deletion of unhelpful and repetitive information, and the addition of important transitional phrases here and there, a not-so-compelling book can take on a new and appealing aspect. What started out as just more sermon material can quickly become a powerful tool for the Kingdom of God.
Here’s how we work: We take the material, either raw transcripts from taped sermons or teaching material (or some more polished writing), and we work with it in four steps.
Are you ready to become an associate of McDougal & Associates? If so, click here now.
9. What Are the McDougal & Associate Publishing Guidelines? Our publishing guidelines are simple and to the point. Each manuscript we puslish must meet the following criteria:
- The book must be Christ honoring in its theme and content.
- The book must not attack or degrade Christians of other persuasions.
- The book must be of lasting value to the Body of Christ, not just a passing fad.
- A professional editorial evaluation
- Professional typesetting for a book of up to 200 pages *
- Complete copyrighting of your work
- A custom-designed cover complete with the EIN barcode used in bookstores worldwide
- ISBN (International Standard Book Number) assignation and registration, making your book available to booksellers everywhere
- The ability to order any number of books, from 50 to 50,000 *
- Worldwide distribution from our site
- The ability to update and reprint the book at any time in the future *
- On-demand printing (for a complete explanation of what we mean by on-demand printing, click here)
- The option to do your book in hardback format *
- The option to do your book as an eBook *
- The option to do your book as an audio book
- Help with writing and polishing the proper back cover material for the book
- Help with marketing ideas
- The honor of bearing the McDougal & Associates label
- We take care to capture and preserve the style of the speaker or writer.
- We make as few changes as possible or practical.
- We do whatever is necessary to improve the flow and impact of the message.
- We make no changes whatsoever without complete consultation with the author.
- We make sure the author is happy with the final product and that it clearly reflects his or her views.
- In other words, we don’t change your message; we help you express it better and more powerfully.
- In the first round, we take our time going through the material, making only light changes, but familiarizing ourselves with the message and the style of the writer or speaker.
- In the second round, we do the major editing (moving material into related subjects if necessary, making needed deletions and clarifications and adding transitional words or phrases aimed at improving the flow and the impact of the message).
- We sit down with some other staff member and read over the book out loud, trying to capture how it will sound to the average reader. As we do this, we make some notations for improving words or phrases, or, occasionally, larger sections, for better impact. Those adjustments are then made.
- Ideally, a final read-through is done with the author. Although we consult with the author regularly in the first three steps, asking questions to clarify something, or sometimes actually asking for additional material to flesh out some important point of the message, in this fourth round the author can express any particular likes and dislikes about the direction the book is taking, note things to add, and point out things that are not said quite to his or her liking. We then make the necessary adjustments. When we have finished these adjustments, the result is a book that we can all be proud of for years to come.
