by Jurrie
15 replies
Hello,

this question is not 100% related to IM, but i thought since some people write books here , someone might be able to help me..

i have written a book , it's not related to IM directly and it's not ment solely for the digital market.
now i'm wondering where to go with it, how do i find a good publisher.
If anyone can give me good tips , i'd be greatfull !

regards

Jurrie
#find
  • Profile picture of the author E. Brian Rose
    Your best bet is to find a literary agent, rather than going direct to the publishers.
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    Founder of JVZoo. All around good guy :)

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  • Profile picture of the author webapex
    There are Print On Demand services that allow you to self publish a nice looking hard or soft bound book without the costs of big print runs or revenue sharing with a publisher.

    Anthony Rowe is the largest print on demand publisher for the UK and Europe:
    http://uk.cpibooks.com/self-publishing/

    Bridgeport National, USA
    www.bnbindery.com/POD.htm

    Online Print On Demand Publishers - they also handle drop shipping to USA (overseas orders cost considerably more)
    www.Lulu.com/

    Having a physical book sold by Amazon.com has a certain prestige and publicity value I believe it gets you into the Google book directory. I hear Kindle titles are essy to publish on Amazon.

    You have to pay about $200 for an ISBN#

    Many somewhat overpriced 'how to' titles sold on clickbank.com in digital form are promoted by affilites from this forum, a 50% affiliate payout is typical for these digital products with no reproduction cost.
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    “An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field” Niels Bohr

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  • Profile picture of the author mattmax
    I'll second the self publishing angle.

    Traditional publishers take a huge cut, so unless there is mass market appeal (think NYT bestseller list) to a book, an author is often better of going that route, IMHO.

    Depending on the topic, once you get the publishing sorted, if the publisher you go with has a good affiliate program, you might even find Warriors interested in promoting it for you.

    Best of luck!
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  • Profile picture of the author Asher Maverick
    There is self publishing, with a small to large upfront deposit to get it published. But you do retain all the rights to your materials. However, getting it sold then becomes the problem, because now you have to market your book so that people will read it and you will make money from it. This route normally has a large initial investment from the author in order to make it work.

    Going the route of the publisher by yourself normally means you have to send the manuscript to many different publishers. Do not expect those manuscripts back, they normally recycle them if your manuscript is not chosen. Also, include with the manuscript a synopsis of the book with the storyline in it, including the ending. The reason for this is that the people who look over the manuscripts have about 100 more like yours sitting on their desk, and that letter will determine whether or not they will even bother reading the first chapter or not.

    The third route is with a literary agent who will do all the fighting for you and make sure you are represented fairly at 10% of your profit, normally. However, they have all the connections in the publishing world and make it a lot easier for you to open doors.

    These are the three ways to get your book published in the real world.
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  • Profile picture of the author mattmax
    Another option would be to do an eBook for digital readers (not a direct sell eBook). Lulu makes it really easy to publish to iDevices and Nooks. They are also running a promo right now that allows authors to keep 90% of the revenue.
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  • Profile picture of the author ankur sharma
    lulu.com , share your book there and lulu publish books on their own. You will also get readymade audience there.
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  • Profile picture of the author E. Brian Rose
    Self publishing is the best option for an author that cannot get mass distribution from a large publisher or for somebody that has an enormous budget to promote their own books. If you have a quality book, get an agent.
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    Founder of JVZoo. All around good guy :)

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  • Profile picture of the author kmcintery
    Jurrie,

    It's hard to break into the standard publishing market. I totally agree with E. Brian Rose's advice. The barrier entry into self publication is extremely low. However, once you have a body of work, you need to work it. Start with the free distribution channels that will assign a free ISBN, and then send it to a free aggregator to distribute your work to the other distribution channels without paying for an ISBN.

    Of course, you're going to have to cut off the aggregator after your work has become a hit, and that is when you reinvest your profits from the free channels to buy an ISBN.

    A blog post:
    The best I can offer you is a review of Amanda Hocking's success. She put up with all the nonsense of submitting query letters for about a year and a half until she decided to go the self publishing route.


    I've heard about Amanda Hocking's surprising "overnight" success story (how could you not when you're in the ebook world), so I decided to read her blog entries from the first post all the way through the last one. She's not an overnight success story. This chicky has been writing since she was young, and worked hard to achieve the level of success she currently enjoys. Interesting tidbits I've learned about her through her posts:
    1.Her Amanda Hocking brand in the young adult / fantasy/romance genre was born in Jan 2009.
    2. She completed 4 novels and had three in the works by the end of Dec 2009.
    3. For 15 months (from Jan 2009 - Mar 2010), Amanda relentlessly shopped for agents and frequently received rejection letters from various traditional publishing houses. There were two extreme pity-party days (spaced at 6 month intervals) that she succumbed to -- only 2 days out of 365. That's amazing. Way to go, woman.
    4. In the middle of March 2010, Amanda said screw it and decided to self publish. She went through Lulu (paperback publisher) and the Amazon Kindle store.
    5. She already had a couple of books written and edited (and re-edited) from the nearly year and a half of solid rejections. So, she was able to upload a backend sale from the very beginning.
    6. By reading her posts and in between the lines, Amanda's first 1,000 sales were the biggest hurdle. She got these sales by finding online communities that blog reviews and cross promote. She also became an accessible author through social media means.
    7. Amanda quit her day job in mid July 2010, because she was able to start supporting herself as a full time writer.
    8. By the end of July 2010, she had reached 10,000 cumulative sales from her various ebooks.
    9. Late August, Amanda had her first book make it into the top 100 bestsellers on the Amazon Kindle.
    10. December 2010, Amanda hit 148,000 something sales.

    And she still continues to publish and sell. What was so inspirational about Amanda Hocking's success is that she stuck with it, especially throughout 15 months of rejections. Plus, she probably wouldn't be the success that she is today without the edits of each of her books during that period. When she arrived on the Kindle scene, Amanda gave the ultimate best revisions of each of her books that she could alone provide.
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    • Profile picture of the author AgileWarrior
      Agree with KMCintery about the low barrier of entry for self-publishing.

      Check out Amazon's own POD arm: CreateSpace. Although you are not earning as high a royalty as SmashWords, think about this: why would YouTube videos rank so high on Google's search results, especially after YouTube is part of Google?

      Unless you are an already established author or expert in your field, it would make more sense to self publish first, work hard at promoting it and making it a smasshng succes, THEN approach a publisher/lit agent for your next book. Keep in mind your objectives of working with them:
      - To get huge advance?
      - To get more oomph in your book promotion (and thereby a higher volume sold)?
      - Be associated with a "big name" publisher?

      As a self-publisher you will retain a lot bigger % of the sales price (even via CreateSpace) than working with the above entitities directly.

      Note that e.g., Tim Ferris got a surge of sales because he lined up the connection for the book promo himself, not because an agent sprinkled the Magic Dust.
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  • Profile picture of the author nick1123
    Originally Posted by Reallyranting View Post

    i have written a book , it's not related to IM directly and it's not ment solely for the digital market.
    now i'm wondering where to go with it, how do i find a good publisher.
    If anyone can give me good tips , i'd be greatfull !
    Before you go through all the work to publish it, make sure you can find 5 people who will pay you at least $1 for it.
    Read Yes, but who said they’d actually BUY the damn thing?
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  • Profile picture of the author ebusinesstutor
    Smashwords is an excellent place to publish with.

    They will help you get your book in many major online booksellers including Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooksotre and more.

    You just upload your manuscript in Word format and they convert it to 9 ebook formats. Their service includes a free ISBN number.

    You earn 85% on your Smashwords sales and 60% from the other ebook retailers.

    Well worth a look.
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  • Profile picture of the author DianaHeuser
    Jurrie,

    What about doing a Kindle version on Amazon? They seem to be doing really well. I am busy helping a friend get his published on Amazon.

    Di
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  • Profile picture of the author Jurrie
    Hey Di

    hmm i might look into that, although the book project is on hold atm , i'm focussing on adsense and i've learned here to focus on one project at a time, grin

    but thanx for the info !!

    regards

    Jurrie
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  • Profile picture of the author angela99
    Originally Posted by Jurrie View Post

    Hello,

    this question is not 100% related to IM, but i thought since some people write books here , someone might be able to help me..

    i have written a book , it's not related to IM directly and it's not ment solely for the digital market.
    now i'm wondering where to go with it, how do i find a good publisher.
    If anyone can give me good tips , i'd be greatfull !

    regards

    Jurrie
    Jurrie, I have one word for you -- Kindle -- https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin

    It shouldn't take you longer than a couple of hours to get your ebook formatted and onto Amazon.

    Amazon will OK your book quickly, less than 48 hours usually.

    Your next step: promote.

    You can promote your ebook in any way you choose: press releases, advertising, whatever...

    Then write another book.

    Of course, you can do what other posters have suggested too: go the Print On Demand (POD) route.

    You can even opt to ship your book around to literary agents. However, no agent will take you on without a platform. If you had a platform, you would have told us that you have readers from other books you've written, your blog...

    Kindle is fast, easy and free.

    More to the point, it gets you selling.

    If you're making excellent sales, you'll interest an agent and publisher.

    Re ebook pricing, if you want to get publisher attention -- don't price your ebook too low: How Low is Too Low? | AARdvark As the post suggests, anecdotally $3.99 is the breaking point. If your ebooks sells well at over $3.99 publishers will be interested.

    Angela
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