How To Get A Book Published – The Competition Is Tough In The Book Publishing Industry
How to get a book published is a question every author asks themselves.
How difficult is it to get a book published by a commercial book publisher? Well the odds are better gambling in Las Vegas. It has been estimated that 25 million people in the United States consider themselves writers and only 5% have been published anywhere. At any one time 5 to 6 million manuscripts are looking for a publishing home.
Most major book publishing houses, and many small presses, will not accept submissions that aren’t represented by a literary agent. During the research of The Publishing Primer: A Blueprint for an Author’s Success, we asked literary agents how many unsolicited query letters/proposals/sample chapters, they receive. For the typical agency it is close to 5000 per year. On the average these agents accepted only 11 new clients, that’s about 1out of every 500 submissions.
Of course writers submit to more than one agency in the hopes of obtaining representation which makes the odds a little better, but not much.
It has been estimated that the five large book publishing companies, Random House Inc., Penguin USA, Simon & Schuster, Time Warner and HarperCollins, account for nearly eighty percent of all book sales in the US. This has occurred for the same reasons any other industry goes through consolidation: by combining certain administrative or staff functions, costs can be reduced and profits increased. Publishing, relative to many other industries, has not enjoyed a high Return on Investment (ROI) for investors. Now, book publishers are much more focused on having every single book they publish be profitable. This means a more risk averse philosophy, with a preference for publishing authors with successful track records–a sound business strategy.
How to get a book published by a commercial book publisher isn’t an easy task, but with perseverance and a good book you can do it.
Tagged with: book publishing industry 2010
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Yeah, it’s pretty bad. If a Republican said something like that they’d lynch him.
When will the Harry Reid story hit the 6:00 news? Which party is led by racist’s now?
The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate apologized on Saturday for comments he made about Barack Obama’s race during the 2008 presidential bid and are quoted in a yet-to-be-released book about the campaign.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada described in private then-Sen. Barack Obama as “light skinned” and “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Obama is the nation’s first African-American president.
“I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments,” Reid said in a statement released after the excerpts were first reported on the Web site of The Atlantic.
“I was a proud and enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama during the campaign and have worked as hard as I can to advance President Obama’s legislative agenda.”
Reid remained neutral during the bitter Democratic primary that became a marathon contest between Obama and then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom Obama tapped as the United States’ top diplomat after the election.
Reid’s comments are included in the book, obtained Saturday by The Associated Press and set to be published on Monday. “Game Change” was written by Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin and New York magazine’s John Heilemann.
The book also says Reid urged Obama to run, perceiving the first-term senator’s impatience.
“You’re not going to go anyplace here,” Reid told Obama of the Senate. “I know that you don’t like it, doing what you’re doing.”
In another section, aides to Republican nominee John McCain described the difficulties they faced with their vice presidential pick, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Steve Schmidt, a senior member of Sen. John McCain’s presidential team, is quoted telling Palin’s foreign policy tutors: “You guys have a lot of work to do. She doesn’t know anything.”
The authors also quote Obama’s initial reaction to McCain’s selection of a little-known governor: “Wow. Well, I guess she’s change.”
Vice presidential nominee Joe Biden was direct. “Who’s Sarah Palin?” the book quotes the then-senator as asking as they left the nominating convention in Denver.
Reid, facing a tough 2010 re-election bid, needs the White House’s help if he wants to keep his seat. Obama’s administration has dispatched officials on dozens of trips to buoy his bid and Obama has raised money for his campaign.
Recognizing the threat, Reid’s apologies also played to his home state: “Moreover, throughout my career, from efforts to integrate the Las Vegas strip and the gaming industry to opposing radical judges and promoting diversity in the Senate, I have worked hard to advance issues.”
Even before his ill-considered remarks were reported, a new survey released Saturday by the Las Vegas Review Journal showed him continuing to earn poor polling numbers. In the poll, by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Reid trailed former state Republican party chairwoman Sue Lowden by a 10 percentage points, 50 percent to 40 percent, and also lagging behind two other opponents.
More than half of Nevadans had an unfavorable opinion of Reid. Just 33 percent of respondents held a favorable opinion.
Can we boycott yaoi and other bad manga?
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT ABOUT RELIGION
Okay, I am just plain sick of what I’m seeing on the shelves. Yaoi is contaminating the market, I mean it’s like jumping from 40 to 60 percent and there are at least 100 titles of it being published in Japan PER MONTH.
Furthermore, the passing years of female audiences heavily influence the market.
“The young teen shojo fans who fueled the manga boom in bookstores have aged and in spite of attempts to interest them in reading more “adult” josei manga, as they grow older these predominantly female readers appear to be abandoning manga for other things. Meanwhile, Twilight has absorbed much of the attention of the teen audience that was buying shojo” (ICv2).
Link: (http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/17292.html)
The decrease in young readers (average about age 12) have caused the manga market in Japan to suffer. The supply and demand of yaoi has also increased.
“The Research Institute for Publications, a Tokyo-based industry group, reports that sales of manga magazines and compiled book volumes dropped 6.6% to 418.7 billion yen (about US$4.63 billion) in 2009 — the largest yearly drop in sales in the market segment’s history. In particular, sales of manga magazines fell 9.4% to 191.3 billion yen (US$2.12 billion). Manga magazines sales had not been below the 200-billion-yen mark in at least 18 years. Sales of print manga overall peaked in 1995. According to the research institute, manga fans have been tightening their budgets in the economic recession by reading in manga cafés instead of buying in bookstores, and there are fewer big hit titles” (NHK).
Source: (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-03-17/manga-sales-drop-a-historic-6.6-percent-in-japan-in-2009)
Intolerant you say? Bigot you say? I have gay friends. It’s just that I want to read something decent. I am just sick of seeing girls squealing and having an orgasm about yaoi.
A yaoi girl thought the fact that I had a pedophile stalking me was cute.
And don’t you DARE tell me what sells sells. Jumping on the bandwagon is being an idiot. Furthermore I can’t touch most of the stuff on the shelf now, and I’m afraid of what happens if some child goes up and picks up a yaoi book.
So does anyone else here want to start a boycott?
No.
You’d have to have a damn good reason for telling people what they can and can not watch or read. And just saying “Because I don’t like it” isn’t quite good enough. Forcing people not to read what you don’t want them to read IS being intolerant and IS being a bigot no matter what you say.
“A yaoi girl thought the fact that I had a pedophile stalking me was cute.”
Yes that’s called stereotyping. That’s also fallacious reasoning.
Also “what sells sells” is not neccessarily “jumping on the bandwagon”. That’s purely an assumption backed up by nothing. Just because something you don’t personally like is increasing in popularity, doesn’t mean it’s bad.
Also the first link you’ve given talks about SEVERAL factors that have caused a decrease in manga sales and it doesn’t even mention to what EXTENT the decline in the shoujo audience has contributed to the decline of manga sales, relative to other factors. Also, there are such things as Yaoi manga so females looking for more yaoi can’t possibily lead to a decline in manga sales because of less female readers, so easily. In any case you’ve provided no evidence that such a link exists, anyway.
Also, the next link you’ve posted talks about manga sales dropping because of the reccession. How on earth is that relevant to this?