Yesterday, we talked about the phenomenon whereby publishers go visiting blog sites looking for potential book projects. So how could you fall into one of those sweet deals—where a publisher comes to you and says, “Love your blog topic. Would you consider writing a book for us? I can give you an advance that would pay your rent while you write it.” Oh yes, wouldn’t that be a nice way to start the New Year?
How could you make that happen? It seems like a completely foreign concept to you if you already have a book idea and especially if you have been showing it around to publishers and keep getting shut down.
The problem is, sometimes we write the wrong book. Your true book—the one publishers and readers want—might be imbedded somewhere within the book idea you are currently pitching. If you were blogging about aspects of your topic and getting a lot of notice, a publisher might find you and suggest a direction for your book that you hadn’t even thought of.
For example, your how to live off the land book might be more popular as a memoir—a, “this is how I did it” story. Your book featuring “my favorite world-wide hikes,” might be more appealing to a publisher if it featured famous world hikers or some of the more challenging hiking stories related to some of the most treacherous mountains in the world. A publisher might prefer seeing your book of humorous poetry transformed into a children’s story book. But the publishers you are approaching might not see the possibilities. Publishers don’t often make these sorts of suggestions when they are already inundated with submissions.
But if there is someone in their employ whose job it is to seek good book ideas by talking to writers at writers’ conferences and by keeping an eye on blogs, you could possibly stumble into a sweet deal simply by maintaining an interesting blog and getting plenty of publicity for it. It’s going to take work for some of you to move beyond your ego, though. If you want to break into the world of publishing as an author, you’ll have to omit the following from your vocabulary:
“But I wanna write about MY experiences.”
“That sounds like a whole lot of work. I’d rather not do all of that research.”
“Write a children’s book? But my poetry is serious stuff—not frivolous.”
“That isn’t the book I had in mind, so no thank you.”
Are you kidding me? You’d rather be an unpublished author than to strike a compromise with a publisher?
Has anyone reading this blog had a visit from a publisher? Would like to hear about it.
In the meantime, be sure to order your copy of my latest book, Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. Once you get that book deal or when you decide to self-publish, you will need to know a lot more than you do now about book promotion. Book promotion is the author’s responsibility and this is true even if you land a major publisher for your book. That’s why publishers are so interested in knowing what the author can bring to the table as far as promotion even before they strike a deal.
Order your copy of Promote Your Book from my bookstore or from amazon.com, Barnes and Nobel.com or IndiBound.com.