HOW TO PICK THE RIGHT
KIND OF PUBLISHER
A Pre-Journey Map to Success
How to get your book in print,
make it just like you want,
and snag every last reward—
before you write the first word
Gordon Burgett
.
Published by Gordon Burgett at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Gordon Burgett
Table of Contents
Introduction
SECTION ONE The Publishing Choices
* Let’s create a pre-journey map to success
* Let’s throw in a miracle too!
* Historically there have been two main paths to getting in print
* The second path to print was actually two kinds of self-publishing
* Now there’s a new fourth path: a publisher (or seven) eager to put your book in print, fast and almost free
* The fifth and sixth kinds of publishing are hybrid blends
* The seventh example: e-books as customized digital publishing
SECTION TWO Tools to Help Make Your Selection
* Starter Questions
* Rewards You Want
* Your Book Standard
* Your Direct Involvement in the Publishing
* 7 Kinds of Publishing
* Publishing Rewards Chart
SECTION THREE How Do You Pick the Right Publisher?
SECTION FOUR Specific Information About the Seven Publishing Venues
* Traditional (Big House) Book Publishing
* Self-Publishing: Traditional Marketing
* Self-Publishing: Niche Marketing
* Ancillary Book Publishing
* Self-Publishing: Mixed Marketing
* Combination: Self-Publishing and Ancillary Publishing
* E-Books from A Website Anchor
SECTION FIVE Publishing Paths to Consider
BONUS REPORT Twelve Ways to Turn Your Book into Many More
* References
* About the Author
* Related Products and Services
Introduction
It used to be easy to pick out the right kind of publisher, and you could be almost certain of success, or lack of, by how your few choices responded.
If you had a finished novel or a book for kids, you headed for the big house publishers. You might try self-publishing for anything in nonfiction—or a big house. And if it was to a niche market, you should try the new niche self-publishing category.
No ancillary publishing or e-books. The mixed marketing through self-publishing, or some other combo blend, was pretty much in the future.
2011 is a great time to publish. Lots of choices, more access to selling distribution, several alternative versions of the same book (bound, digital, and seven chances to have the book being sold simultaneously).
Which is why I’m writing this e-book, because its title (as a question) is what I am now most frequently asked. What follows is my answer, plus three operational steps that will make the book creation easier and the end result better. I hope it helps.
SECTION ONE
The Publishing Choices
Most writers never enjoy book publishing success because they can’t or don’t know how to get their words properly in print. They can write well enough and have a salable idea, they just can’t get all the money-making parts together.
If that’s you—or you just want to do it better!—let’s get you over that hurdle, so you can get your book quickly and profitably in print, the book looks like you want it to, and you get every last reward you deserve.
Of course that is never the problem in the movies. A person decides to write a book. They pick up a quill or a pen or they start typing on a computer. They are still at it late that night, and the next morning they are waving their book wildly overhead, completely written, printed, and bound!
Heavens, if were that simple we’d all write 500 of them!
I’ve labored through 39 published books and I must be a dullard because it always took me months rather than hours—and there was a whole lot more work involved.
But I did figure out how to reduce the time, energy, and sometimes sheer drudgery of chipping an opus out of whole rock, as well as how to boost the rewards and expand the lifetime payback manifold. Let me share the shortcuts to success here.
Let’s create a pre-journey map to success
The best time you can invest in a new book is the hours you spend plotting what your book is about, who would care a whit to buy it, what publisher can best make it sell, what title it needs, how it must look to shake those buying bucks loose, and precisely what you can do to make all of that take place quickly and reliably.
In other words, laying out a surefire pre-journey map to success. To me, that means you getting your book in print, making it just like you want, and snagging every last reward for pulling it off. Almost all of which is done before you write the first word!
Crucial to that is picking the right publisher—or publishers, in the right order.
Thanks for reading this e-book. What I like best about the pre-planning is that by doing it first, you will know at every step in the book’s creation what you want, how you want it to read and look, and why you are writing a book rather than reading one!
The biggest pay-off? By doing it this way, it takes only half, or even a third, as long to write your book and get it published the best way(s).
Let’s throw in a miracle too!
The worst place to start publishing is by doubting if you can. Or wondering if there are publishers eager to put your works in print—and where they are.
That was a king-sized concern when I was a kid. There were big-city publishers and not much else, except mimeo machines. Self-publishers were rare, and book printers took months to get books through the Linotypes.
There seemed to be millions of would-be authors on that same path, talking up a book idea or carrying around a manuscript already half-written. Some even had a typed final tome making the rounds. But getting some publisher’s nod, a contract, a fat advance, steady royalties, and fame and fortune for sure—you had about as a good a chance trying to print and sell a horse.
Not today. There are seven publishing routes, six you can control—and the newest is almost a miracle, because through it every one of you reading these words can literally be in digital print in hours or in a first-class bound book in days, FREE—with each version of your book marketed worldwide almost as fast as your books appear.
I will explain it in a moment. I call it ancillary publishing , and it is eerily like that old movie version where the book does seem to almost magically appear—alas, after you have put the words together, proofed, and styled them.
Of course, for all of us our first miracle is getting in print at all. I sold a short story when I was a sophomore in high school to a national kid’s magazine. Pure fiction. I made up every bit of it. They paid me $4. (It took another 15 years for my first book.)
The ancillary publishing miracle that opens the publishing doors for all of us I stumbled upon about two years ago. By then I’d had some 1,700 freelance articles and 35 books in print—and I’d owned a publishing company for 25+ years, with all the book prepping and editing that implies.
I found a half-dozen publishers accessible to anybody with a computer and Internet entrée that would simply convert your submitted book (the topic doesn’t seem to matter much) into a bound or electronic book, publish it, and get it distributed worldwide, FREE (or almost free). I was so surprised, delighted, and impressed I wrote my newest book about it: How To Get Your Book Published Free In Minutes And Marketed Worldwide In Days! Does it work? I’ve submitted two books to these publishers and seen it appear in salable format a total of 12 times.
The important thing now is that any of you who really want to have your book published have ancillary publishing at your beck. They will put your words into good-looking, bookstore-level bound layout, or into a Kindle or iPad software e-book. Will somebody publish it is no longer an issue. Now you can figure out which of the seven publishing choices (that I discuss on these pages) would work best for you. Which is why a pre-journey map to success particularly makes sense (and cents) now!
Historically there were two main paths to getting in print
The first is the “BIG DREAM.” That a big-name, established, national publisher would beg you to let them put your words in print, send you a huge advance and bags of royalties, and have you on radio and TV almost all the time…
In fact, if you wrote fiction or children’s books, going through the major, traditional publishers was about the only way to see your words printed and sold. (Why? Distributors and libraries wouldn’t buy self-published fiction, and it was too expensive to produce and market kids’ books yourself.)
Unless you’re a celebrity, it’s still pretty much a BIG DREAM. The big houses accept less than 1% of the books proposed to them, and even if they do buy your opus, the process is very slow and pays poorly. It may be the worst way to market.
To get the major houses to accept and publish your book, the process almost always involves a query letter or book proposal, an acceptance, your sending many drafts of your work to them during the editing phase, the printing, and, usually, fitful marketing.
The initial book acceptance can take months or years, the printed book (once accepted) takes another 18 months average get to print, and you are paid from 5-15% of the book’s list price. Checks are issued twice or thrice a year. The publisher outlines the contents, designs the cover, and almost always changes the title!
On rare occasions, “big house” authors get fame and fortune. Most, instead, get a huge disappointment.
Yes, a few authors earn millions of dollars that way. Most receive less than $40,000… often far less.
The second path to print was actually two kinds of self-publishing
Self-publishing can be your most profitable nonfiction publishing path.
It’s actually two kinds of self-publishing, the traditional way and the niche-publishing way. Let’s discuss them more fully later.
Anybody can self-publish but it can take a ton of time, you must learn about publishing and marketing, and to succeed you must take charge of the selling. It also entails some financial risk—and some books don’t come close to breaking even.