Yes,
You Have a Book Inside You.
So?

Paul McNeese — Founder, Senior Editor
OPA Author Services, Scottsdale, Arizona

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Yes, You Have a Book Inside You. So?

Copyright 2011, Paul F. McNeese and OPA Author Services All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4660-0706-2

No part of this book, either in part or in whole, may be reproduced, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any electronic, photographic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or entry into any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner, except for brief quotations embodied in literary articles and reviews.

OPA Author Services is a full-service consortium devoted to creating, producing and marketing high-quality books and book products for independent authors who see their writing as not only a pathway to recognition or an expression of self but also as a business opportunity unique in today’s world in an industry that is experiencing nearly existential change that is leading to a new kind of growth for both books and their authors.

For further information about any of the content of this book, please contact us at our website, http://www.opaauthorservices.com

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Table of Contents

Wisdom from Charles Caleb Colton*

“There are three difficulties in authorship:
to write anything worth publishing,
to find honest men to publish it,
and to find sensible men to read it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

*Who? Well, that’s what Google is for!

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Introduction

So you’ve decided to write and publish a book (or another book), eh? Well, congratulations. We think that almost everyone may have a book buried deep inside themselves, just waiting to burst forth.

The story we’re about to tell comes to you from our perspective, and it’s partly about what we do and how we do it, but the process we outline is what you will experience no matter whom you work with in developing a book.

That one-word question we asked on the front cover (“So?”) is really the key to it all, because it leads to a host of more detailed considerations, like:

Where the heck did the idea of writing your book come from? And does it make any sense?

If it came from deep enough inside you (gut level), it’s probably possible, and it may even be compelling. Otherwise, try something else—like tennis.

Are you willing to spend the time and energy it will take to actually write a book?

Figure on your writing time in hundreds of hours (yes, hours), and be prepared to think about your work all the time (well, most).

What do you know about books, about publishing, about marketing published materials?

Probably not much. So it’s reasonable to think that you should get professional advice before committing the time and money it will take to make you a successful author and/or self-publisher.

How will you publish?

You can “shop” your manuscript to agents and independent publishers (who buy perhaps one out of every thousand manuscripts they see), and if you’re successful you may be published in two years or so—or not . . . but be willing to give up the rights to your work, don’t count on a financial advance, and be ready for a surprisingly low royalty percentage.

You can turn your manuscript over to a company that churns out hundreds of books a month—they’re called “vanity” or “subsidy” publishers or “book packagers”— whose business is to print books, not to help authors . . . and yes, they charge for everything they do and retain most of the income from the books they sell.

Or you can “do it yourself,” retaining all of the rights, all of the income, more of the profits (but many of the headaches)—and keeping control of the book that can now represent a personal business opportunity for you if you’re willing to pursue it. This category is called “self-publishing” and is now looking seriously like the best choice for many authors (especially first-timers), regardless of what they write.

And how about the cost of this so-called “self-publishing” thing . . . do you think you can do it for nothing? Or on the cheap?

Well, you can—but we don’t advise it. To develop and produce a marketable, first-quality book can cost several thousand dollars before you ever see a printed copy, so unless you have a plan that supports the notion that your target market is large enough to cover all costs and ultimately produce a profit, think twice about publishing a printed book. There are alternatives, though, and we’d love to talk to you about those, too. But there’s nothing quite like having a book, because a book can rapidly develop into a “product line!”

Would you be willing to shed the “ego factor” of being an “author” in favor of the more practical possibility that with your work you might, indeed, be birthing a business?

If your answer to this question is “Yes,” read on. This little book will give you much of the basic knowledge you’ll need to be able to fully understand the process, which will, in turn, help you to make the right decisions, at the right time, in the right order, and will vastly improve your chances for both emotional and financial success in this wonderful business of books.

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Book Development – Concept and Content

OPA Author Services is a book industry professional consortium that works with both nonfiction and fiction authors.

We can begin working with an idea and help to develop it, nurture it, create a book, and deliver it to an appropriate marketplace. But this doesn’t happen very often, because authors usually write before they think. More often than not, a budding author will write a manuscript— or a draft—and then come to us for a review (see below), and we will give them (for a reasonable fee) an honest evaluation. Some authors can’t handle the honesty (they’re the ones who need the most help), and others are delighted with the honesty (they’re the ones with the most hope).

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Submitting Your Manuscript

Publishers generally accept manuscripts for review as Microsoft Word documents (.doc or .rtf formats) or similar. Ideally, a manuscript will be submitted electronically, essentially unformatted (use MS Word’s “Normal” template). Here are the basics:

Page size: 8.5” by 11”

Margins: 1” top and bottom, left and right

12-point typeface for text (Times New Roman is good), 14-point bold for subheads, and 18-point bold for chapter titles

Do not apply type “styles” — you are not designing the book, you’re writing it.

Either 1.5-line or double-spaced text is acceptable

*****

Manuscript Review and Evaluation

After an acquisition editor decides that the manuscript may be suitable for publication, an experienced staff editor (in a major publishing house) or an independent book editor (working for an agent or smaller publisher) conducts a reading, analysis and evaluation of the submitted manuscript. Depending upon the company, this evaluation will be conducted either without charge or for a reasonable fee.

In our company, which does not charge a fee for first reading (but does not provide this analysis to the author until or unless the mutual decision is made to move forwrad with the book project), the product will be a written editorial analysis, developed by an editor familiar with and experienced in the genre of the manuscript itself, with a view to its strengths and weaknesses, a market evaluation based upon the author’s original material, a comparison to other similar books currently in the marketplace—if applicable—and commentary on certain basic and current grammatical and syntactic standards, if such commentary is warranted.

This process is intended to help us in our decision making; it is not a marketing recommendation in any way, but the information developed is passed on to the author in the event our company is chosen to undertake production of the book product.