How To Get Your Book Published
How to Get Your Book Published
Author: Jason Storm
There are 4 ways that you can publish a book:
1. Commercial Book Publishing
2. Self Publishing
3. Subsidy Publishing
4. Ebook Publishing
1. Commercial Book Publishing – This is the main way that authors have been getting published and can be very challenging. While there are thousands of publishing houses, today there are more writers than ever before.
A publishing house is a business and like all businesses they have a goal to create profits in an efficient manner. It is unlikely that you will be able to make contact with a publishing house if you don’t have a good literary agent.
Surveys show that only 1 out 400 applicants are accepted by literary agents for representation. The majority of literary agents prefer to take on clients that have previously been published.
To get published with a publishing house will take a combination of talent, timing and luck. You can be an very talented writer and have a wonderful book but if the publishing house just finished publishing a book that is similar to yours you may not be accepted – or if this is a “red hot market” then you may be lucky.
For these reasons it is important to do research and see what are the trends and what people are buying. An excellent resource for this type of information is Amazon’s Bestseller section.
2. Self Publishing – Where in the past commercial publishing was the only option, today you can “self-publish” your book. Self publishing is when you take on all of the jobs that are needed to create, print and distribute your book.
Some of the services required are:
*Editing – This is very important for most types of books
*Proof Pages – Preparing the pages and page order
*Artwork – You’ll need both Front and Back covers plus the internal artwork which is any images or clip-art that appears within the text
*Printing – You will need to turn your electronic files into hard/soft cover books. There are 3 options for printing: get a small amount printed, get a large amount printed or use a print-on-demand service
*Distribution – How will you distribute the books? You can contact retailers and online distributors yourself or utilize a professional service
The first step is to decide which tasks you will do and which tasks you will hire someone else to do. Today, thanks to the internet, there is lots of free information available on each step of the publishing process.
3. Subsidy Publishing – This is when the author pays a printer to produce a book and then earns royalties from the sales of the book. Sometimes this is confused with self publishing. With self publishing the author pays all the expenses and in turn receives 100% of the proceeds.
Another name for this is “Vanity Publishing Houses” which sometimes can have bad reputations. They will often claim that they can sell the book and then after paying for everything the writer is left without any real distribution and stuck with a bunch of books.
4. Ebook Publishing – This is a new approach that is gaining a lot of popularity. It is very easy to take a digital file and turn it into and ebook to sell online. A good way to do this is by having a personal website or blog and putting up articles and content to attract visitors and get publicity.
Alternatively, you can order an ISBN online and then companies like Amazon and Mobipocket will sell your ebook through their distribution network and you earn royalties from each sale.
Thanks to the internet there has never been a better time for an author to get published. Some people feel that because there is so much information online that traditional books will become obsolete.
I feel that while this may be true in some categories, for the most part it is the opposite – all of the free information creates a hunger for more!
When radio first arrived, the music industry was scared that they wouldn’t sell as many albums and then they started selling much more than ever before. It’s similar to how in a grocery store you are offered free samples, if it tastes good than you are more likely to buy.
I recommend spending a good amount of time doing research until you discover which is the best way for you to publish your book. I highly recommend utilizing the internet to share with others and grow your readership.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/education-articles/how-to-get-your-book-published-420709.html
About the Author
Jason Storm is a contributor to the online resource center for authors: Book Publishers Online blog, and runs the search engine optimization consulting business Seo Publicity.
Tagged with: book publishers online • book publishing • book publishing news • publishers • publishers directory • publishing information • publishing news
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My mom, author of her dissertation, Politicizing Asian American Literature, got hers published by Routledge.
Get in contact with children’s publishing companies: Random House, etc.
The best way is traditional publishing. Self publishing may be cheap (trust me it isn’t) but hon, you get what you pay for.
If you believe in yourself and in your book, you owe it to yourself to try traditional publishing for 12 – 18 months before you toss it away on self publishing nonsense. The average book that is self published sells under 100 copies. Don’t you think you deserve better than that?
If you go to my profile you will find a lot of starred Q and A about writing and publishing. Feel free to print them out and study them. You can add me as fan and get notices when I add new ones. You will find a lot of great info there to help you. Pax- C
But you’re assuming your book fills a niche that no other book does, and that#s almost certainly not true.
Let’s say that there’s a market for 100 new fantasy titles every year (a completely random number, btw). Then if 1,000 people submit new fantasy novels every year, 900 of them are going to be disappointed. Regardless of what the quality is. Publishers only have the capacity to take on a certain number of new books at a time – if they are offered more than that, even if they are of sufficient standard, they turn the extra ones down.
I first started planning ’28 Hours’ about six years ago, and writing it about four years ago. Start to finish it took about a year, including editing, read-throughs, getting sidetracked with other books I was writing etc. I’ve also got six other novels written which I again got sidetracked from and am now going back to in order to tidy them up/re-edit them so that they can be sent to my publisher as well. Each one took about the same time to write/complete.
I don’t have an agent- I was submitting directly to publishers. I was probably submitting on and off to publishers for about a year before one picked it up. The book was contracted in late january this year and was released in ebook format in late may 2010. It is due to be released into paperback in October 2010.
The second book is a novella, Bark at the Moon, which took about three months start to finish and that was contracted in early february, again without an agent, to a different publisher. It is due for release in ebook format on August 16th 2010. I don’t know when the paperback release for this is yet.
Full info on 28 Hours (novel)- see the books tab on http://miabrookes.webs.com
Full info on Bark at the Moon (novella)- see the books tab on http://juliadavies.webs.com
(Yes, there is a reason that they’re both under different pen names)
You have as much chance of becoming a successful published author as anyone else. You just have to get your book out there. Ask your local library or bookstore for the current edition of “Writer’s Market.” It has a list of publishers, what they look for, and tips on how to get published.
And if you’re worried about your work being ripped off (A legit concern!), go to http://www.copyright.gov It’s the official web site for the U.S. Copyright Office. It has a FAQ about what rights you have as an author and you can print off forms if you want to register your work.
What is the best way to get your book published ?
I have checked into self publishing but not sure if its a good idea. Please tell me the very best way for a brand new author to get a book published and sold at stores not just online….Is this possible?
Also, if we send it to a publisher to review, how do oyu trust them not to duplicate your work? This is really new to me , I apprecaite any information…
Thanks so much for your help!!
Thanks for helping, is it hard to get an agent? Thanks
How do you get your book published?
What is the cheap and easy way to go about getting your book published?
How did you get your book published?
I am curious as to how you all went about getting your work published. I am new to this and have a very funny short book I just finished dealing with dogs. I have no idea, nor have I entertained the notion of getting it published until now? Any good avenues? Thanks Ms. Birdy.
How difficult is it to get your book published?
I’m not asking how, as I know how. But there are loads and loads of books being published. If there is an audience for your book, and it is written to a high quality, surely it should not be that difficult to have it published?
How long did it take to write and get your book published?
If you have every gotten your work published or not, how long has it taken you to write a manuscript that you were satisfied with?
How long did it take you before you got an agent?
How long after was your book published?
If your book is published: What is it about? And may I know the title so I may read it?
Thanks!