Writing and Publishing News

You keep hearing and reading that publishing is a business and that one should adopt a business head when contemplating producing a book. But how business savvy must you be in order to successfully launch a memoir, a book of poetry, a novel or a children’s book? Isn’t it enough to just know in your heart that this is what you want to do?

As writers, we are also artists who create with words. We develop a theme for a book and then design it by choosing and then moving words. Of course, those words—the way they are strung together—represent thoughts, concepts, truths and emotions.

Most books start out as emotional projects, wouldn’t you agree? Even the concept of a business book is often conceived within the area of the emotions. The author has a passion for teaching this theory or subject—he has a burning desire to share what he knows in a way that will make a difference in someone’s life.

It is fact, that, despite what you know—publishing is a business and should be approached as such—in most cases, books have their beginnings as an emotional thought rather than a business decision. “I want to help,” is emotional. “I want to make a difference,” is emotional. “I have something to say and I must say it,” is emotional. “I truly want to share what I know,” is emotional. “I have this story running around in my head and I must put it on paper,” is emotional.

Many authors eventually flip over to business mode where their emotional projects are concerned. Once it is written, they begin to justify their reasons for seeking publication. They may write a book proposal and even take note of the truths it reveals—“Wow, there are a lot of books on this subject already,” or “I’m having trouble establishing my target audience,” or “I really don’t have a platform.” And most go ahead and pursue publication anyway. Others will make adjustments to their original plans and try to create a more publishable project.

We each enter into the world of publishing from a different angle—with varied knowledge, hopes and expectations. And each of us have different outcomes. This is due to emotions, as well. For example, if you hate public speaking, you’re going to avoid doing it even if this may be the best way for you to promote your particular book. Maybe you have little interest in hawking your book at all—you can’t get out much, you don’t have the know-how to promote online.

Every book comes with a side-story and, if the author cares to share it, you’ll discover that it is laced with emotion. I believe that it is the nature of the emotion invested, as well as the balance of emotion and business savvy that will determine the measure of success for that book. It is a wise author who detaches him/herself from their emotional grasp at least enough to determine whether this book is the right book for the right audience and whether it is being produced at the right time.

How do you know? If you’ve written a well-researched book proposal, you know. It’s now a matter of having the courage to make the right decision on behalf of your book. This might mean, rewriting it, changing the focus, self-publishing rather than going with a pay-to-publish company, holding out for a traditional publisher or trashing the project and starting over. And this sort of decision certainly does take courage. It’s not easy to stomp all over one’s emotions.

For assistance in determining the potential for your book, read my book—I wrote it for you. The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html

If you need additional help producing a pristine, useful, telling book proposal, sign up for my Book Proposal Course. http://www.matilijapress.com/course_bookproposal.htm

Are you aware of the importance of Submission Guidelines? Do you always check the guidelines for a publisher before submitting your project? If not, you are probably often rejected.

Sure, there might be any number of reasons for being rejected, but an acquisitions editor at a publishing house doesn’t need a good reason for rejecting a query letter, proposal or manuscript in these days of high (over the top) competition. Just send your material helter skelter, without consideration for that publisher’s submission process or his current needs and your otherwise excellent project might be rejected on the spot.

What is the best way to get your foot in the door with a publisher of your choice? Locate, study and adhere to each publisher’s Submission Guidelines.

Now locating the guidelines is sometimes tricky. I cannot believe how difficult some web designers make it to find the Submission Guidelines (Writer’s Guidelines, Guidelines for Authors…). Have you experienced this in your pursuit of guidelines? I’d love to hear some of your stories.

All I can advise is that, if you can’t easily spot the guidelines link, try logical thinking to discover them. Click on “Contact Us” or “About Us.” In some cases, you then must scour the entire page to locate a link to the guidelines.

If logic doesn’t work, and it does not in way too many instances, just start looking everywhere throughout the site. You may be surprised at where you’ll find the guidelines. And make notes; otherwise, you may never find your way back through the maze to the guidelines again. Yes, they’re sometimes hidden that well.

Once you locate the guidelines, study them. What type of manuscripts does this publisher want? What is his preferred word count? Are they open to submissions year round? How do they want to be approached—via query letter or do they want a full-blown proposal? Some actually want to see the manuscript first. Do they prefer or accept submissions via email?

Some publishers really put potential authors through some rigorous paces. They state, in their guidelines, that they want to receive a proposal including 3 pages of this and 6 of these. They’ll dictate the margin depth, how many words allowed per page and so forth. Some authors adhere to every request and get rejected. Others present their projects in styles of their own and capture the publishers’ attention. I typically recommend to my clients and students that they follow the guidelines as closely as they can assuming that there is a good reason for the publishers’ requests. Secretly, I think that some publishers try to make potential authors jump through their hoops just to see if they can. It’s a sick game they play.

That said, I still adhere to my original advice—never send anything to any publisher without first locating, studying and following their Submission Guidelines (at least as closely as makes sense with your particular project).

For more about locating, approaching and working with a publisher, read my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book.
http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html

Today’s blog entry is excerpted from my latest book—an ebook: The Successful Author’s Handbook

Do you have an amazing life story that’s just burning to be told? Did you overcome a major obstacle and hope to share it with the world? Are you an expert in your field and you want to educate others? Or have you always dreamed of writing a novel?

According to a Jenkins Group 2002 survey, eighty-one percent of Americans believe they have a book in them. And technology has made it possible for more of us to actually write and produce our books. Sadly, most authors fail. Why? They approach the publishing industry all wrong.

Few first-time authors understand that while writing is a craft, publishing is a business and a published book is a product. As an author in today’s highly competitive publishing climate, it is imperative that you follow some measure of publishing protocol. What if you disregard this advice and bring your book out on a whim, hoping for bestseller status? It could happen. But it is highly unlikely. Here are some statistics to help you see the bigger picture:

In 2006, RR Bowker, the keeper of publishing data, recorded 291,290 new books published that year. There were around 1.5 million books in print. Ten of those titles in print sold a million or more copies in 2006. A whopping 948,000 of them (or over seventy-six percent) sold fewer than 100 copies. (As I understand it, these figures exclude self-published books, those published through “pay-to-publish” companies, text books and other books that are not in the mainstream.)

For the 2008 tally, Bowker announced that there were 560,026 books produced. This includes self-published and pay-to-publish books. Only 275,232 of those books were from traditional royalty publishing houses.

The sad truth is that, while technology makes it easier for ordinary citizens to become published authors, it has created an arena of failure for most of them.

A typical hopeful author will spend months and sometimes years writing his memoir or the novel of his dreams. He lovingly completes it and then turns it over to the best editor he knows—a high school PE teacher, a 1957 college graduate or a neighbor with a large vocabulary. He then jumps on the Internet in search of a publisher. Bingo! Google brings up a whole list of publishers seeking manuscripts—any manuscript. These publishers offer to help authors “self-publish” their books. His is accepted right away. All he has to do is send money—in some cases, lots of it. And when the book is finally published, the author is invited to purchase as many copies as he wants. I refer to these as “pay-to-publish” companies. You might know them by names such as iUniverse, AuthorHouse, Xlibris and Infinity. (This list represents just a fraction of all pay-to-publish companies.)

It doesn’t take this disillusioned author long to discover that, contrary to what he remembers reading in the publishing contract, his book will not be sold through bookstores. In fact, the only books that sell from this point on, are those that he hand-sells to family, friends and a few neighbors. If he’s lucky, sales will number around 200, or so—maybe generating enough revenue to pay the publishing bill. Most are not that fortunate.

This example, fellow authors, is a good representation of the thousands of authors who fail every year.

So how does one experience success as an author? There are two simple steps.

Step Number One: Study the Publishing Industry.
• Read books by publishing professionals such as Patricia Fry, Dan Poynter, Brian Jud and Marilyn Ross.
• Read magazines about the industry, in particular, Publisher’s Weekly, (subscribe to their free ezine, www.publishersweekly.com) and SPAWN Market Update (for members of Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network, www.spawn.org.)
• Attend writing and publishing conferences. Locate conferences at http://shawguides.com or do a Google search to find conferences near you.
• Join publishers’ organizations, such as SPAWN (Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network) www.spawn.org; IBPA (The Independent Book Publishers Association) www.ibpa-online.org and SPAN (Small Publishers of North America) www.spannet.org.

There’s much more where this came from. Let me know if you’d like to see more excerpts. And keep in mind that, while this news seems a little disheartening, it is nothing compared to how disheartened you will feel if you take your book project down the wrong publishing road without a reliable map.

Order your copy of The Successful Author’s Handbook (an ebook) here:
http://www.matilijapress.com/successful_author_handbook.html

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