For years, I’ve been saying, “Publishing is not an extension of your writing.” In other words, you can’t just ease into the world of publishing using the same skills and techniques you use in writing. As you know, writing is a craft and publishing is a business.
Well, publishing is not advanced writing, either. You can’t shift from one to the other as easily as you would glide from first to second grade. It’s more like leaving grammar school and enrolling in college or graduating from the carefree life of high school and suddenly having a spouse and kids to take care of.
Anyone who can write worth a darn, can sit down and write a book. Sure, some people might have trouble organizing the book, fleshing out the characters, handling dialog, etc. But a serious, diligent writer, such as our fictitious Daren, will work through these obstacles and eventually complete a book. When Daren finishes the book, he decides to take what he perceives as the next logical step and have it published. So what does he do? He panics.
He realizes that he doesn’t know the first thing about getting a book published. Oh, Daren remembers Sandy, in his writers’ group telling how her uncle landed a major publisher for his novel in 1961. And he recalls the conversation one night about how today you must pay someone to publish your book. Not knowing what else to do, our writer went online, typed “book publisher” at the Google prompt and woo la, he knew that his dream was about to come true.
There, right before his eyes was an array of publishers—Xlibris, AuthorHouse, IUniverse, PublishAmerica, Tate… Obviously, it didn’t take him long to land a publisher and soon he was a published author. End of story? Happy ending? Well, no and yes.
You see, while Daren put out boo coo bucks to have his book published and while is book bombed, he is a little smarter about the publishing industry. He said what many first-time authors tell me, “I made every mistake in the book.” Most of these authors never make the same mistakes twice. For some, it is because they move on, up and out of the world of publishing, never to darken its door again. For others, it’s because they educate themselves about the publishing industry before their second and third books. Our author was in the second category.
Daren was lucky. He still had some money left after his wild spending spree with (I won’t tell you which) fee-based “self-publishing” company. He figured that the more services he purchased, the more successful his book would be. Well, there might be a bit of logic in this IF only Daren had understood his responsibilities as a published author.
Okay, fast forward a year or so. There’s Darren in his home office reading Patricia Fry’s book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. He is almost finished with it. He chose this book because, in his quest to learn more about publishing (after failing so miserably with his first publishing project), he stumbled across my (Patricia Fry’s) website and began reading some of my articles. He also became a regular at my blog site. He joined SPAWN and IBPA and drank in the information available through their websites and publications. He participated in the discussion groups, attended workshops and even hired Patricia to help him write a book proposal for his second nonfiction book.
This time around, Daren knows more about what he’s doing. He took it upon himself to educate himself about the industry and his publishing options. He came to understand that he is responsible for promoting his own book and that NO ONE cares about that book as much as he does. Daren has a much greater chance of success the second time around because he realizes that publishing is a whole different animal than is the process or the act of writing and it must be approached from a completely different angle.
Order your copy of The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book TODAY. This book could be your lifeline to the publishing industry. The information in this book could make the difference for you between success and failure. In fact, it is for the many Darens that I meet every year that I wrote this book. And my goal is to reach them BEFORE they start making the typical mistakes.
http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html