CALVENDO's unique self-publishing concept expanding to the UK

Press release September 8, 2014 Publishing Start-ups Calendars Online platform Creative industries Self-publishing Photography

Platform enables photographers to create calendars and retail them professionally

It's not a new idea to offer photographers, graphic designers, designers, artists and other creative people an online platform for designing their own calendars. What's new is that now there's a platform with a direct book retail channel. This successful self-publishing model is called CALVENDO and it comes with its own publishing house which is now expanding to the UK and France. In German-speaking countries, the CALVENDO platform was set up in the autumn of 2012. Since then, tens of thousands of calendars created by photographers and artists have been sold. Following this huge success, launching the platform internationally is the next logical step, and www.calvendo.co.uk has just launched in the UK.

CALVENDO has set up an interface with the retail sector and is the first and only publishing house worldwide for self-publishers that enables creative people to professionally and internationally sell individually designed wall calendars and poster books.

Here’s how it works: Users upload their images, graphic art or texts to create their calendar on the online platform. CALVENDO then performs a double quality assurance check before releasing the result for sale through retailers such as Amazon. Use of the online platform is free of charge for creators and authors, while they receive up to 30 per cent of the earnings from each copy actually ordered. CALVENDO's creative authors define their own retail prices based on a minimum price and retain all of the rights pertaining to their own images and content.

"Many photographers and artists have already designed calendars or poster books for CALVENDO's German publishing house. Expanding to other countries with new, site-based teams was just the next logical step," says Hans-Joachim Jauch, Managing Director at CALVENDO. "We can now offer creative people in the UK and France a platform to present their ideas to a wider audience. And make a profit at absolutely no financial risk to themselves. At CALVENDO, we support them in the development of their ideas and then take the burden of production and distribution in co-operation with our powerful partners."

CALVENDO offers all of the modules necessary for this process – from online calendar creation software and high-quality printing right down to sales and remittance of earnings. All of the calendar ideas uploaded by authors and self-publishers are subjected to a double quality assurance process before they can be released for publishing: first, the content is examined; next, the files are checked for adequate technical printing quality. Once released, the creative projects go out to established book catalogues (such as the list of deliverable books) with their own ISBN. As soon as any orders are received from retailers, the calendars and poster books go into production. "Our business model has proved to be a winning concept. Following our successful launch in Germany in the autumn of 2012, the time has now come to extend our operations to the international market. And we do mean that literally, because creativity has never known boundaries," says Managing Director Hans-Joachim Jauch.

The CALVENDO online platform has created a much wider range of calendars than those offered by any of the traditional publishing houses. Some of the top categories on offer are Nature, Technology, People, Fun and Science. Under these headings, however, CALVENDO does not impose any restrictions on its authors and gives valuable hints on choosing a subject.

Thus, creators from all walks of life can "Share Creativity" by developing their ideas and presenting them to others as a printed calendars or poster books.

Free registration on www.calvendo.co.uk

www.facebook.com/Calvendo.co.uk
www.twitter.com/Calvendo_UK

About CALVENDO

CALVENDO is a subsidiary of the Franz Cornelsen Bildung group in Germany. Its annual sales volume of over €330m sets the group amongst the leading publishing houses on the German-speaking market. More than 2,000 employees develop, design and sell education and science related products with a publishing programme of 23,000 titles. With its trademarks Heye, Weingarten and Harenberg, Cornelsen is also Germany's number one calendar vendor.

For media enquiries, please contact:

Barbara Geier

Calvendo Country Manager UK

Phone 07983 242 195

[email protected]

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Publishing Start-ups Calendars Online platform Creative industries Self-publishing Photography