How to Get Your Book Published
The Three Paths
1. Traditional 'Trade' Publishing
Before the digital age, the usual path to try to get published was to send the manuscript to as many publishers as time and
money for copying and postage allowed, and hope one would bite. Fame was a shoo-in to an author contract, and infamy did just as well or better, but for much of the
crowd the odds were something like that of the sperm trying to achieve the egg. Despite great numbers of titles being published each year, the odds were long for an unsolicited
manuscript from an unknown getting published and selling acceptably well. Now, those odds are even worse. Some measure of author name recognition -- even if only in a small niche field -- greatly increases the chance of getting a contract. The bigger publishers tend to be more desirable to pursue for an author because of their
large distribution networks and sales potential, but small publishers certainly have a place too, especially for niche readerships. Should an author be fortunate enough to
be offered a contract, the traditional big publisher would cover all costs to publish and typically pay the author an advance on future royalties. Royalty percentages are
small, but if a lot of copies sell the author might earn a good living on royalties without having borne any of the risk of the publishing costs. It can be a reasonable trade off for publishers to reap most of the profit in exchange for producing a book from a manuscript and shouldering all of the fiscal risk. Trade publishers, in fact, actually lose money on most of their books, but the winners can really win big and carry the whole list to profitability. If you do get a contract with a big name publisher, don't expect it to mean big royalty checks will be rolling in.
The majority of trade-published books are withdrawn and remaindered after several months due to lagging sales. Author royalty percentages can vary, but for a book cover priced from twenty to forty dollars, one or two dollars royalty for the author is the most that can be expected from the big trades.
However, the rare exception that pays much higher royalties can be found amongst smaller publishers such as this one. With thousands of publishers in the United States alone, there is nearly limitless potential to shop around for a publisher. It is critical to seek one who can truly reach your particular audience through its established distribution channels. A publisher with other titles in your subject area would be a natural fit. Don't expect a trade publisher to actively promote your book. In fact, they expect the author to get out there and promote it. The bigger the publisher, the less attention they will likely give to you and your book.
To pursue being published by the major trade publishers, often a literary agent is required. (Simon & Schuster, Macmillan/St. Martin's, Penguin/Putnam and Random House/Knopf/Doubleday, for example, all require that an agent represent your unsolicited manuscript for you.) Here are 24 agents accepting manuscripts from new authors. If an agent accepts you as a client, s/he will work with you to prepare a professional book proposal to accompany your manuscript. Agents, in effect, screen out non-marketable manuscripts for the major publishers. Here are some links to major publishers' policies on manuscript submissions:
As the digital age came of age, suddenly desktop software could do what the old prepress departments did at a fraction of the cost and effort. More importantly, not only did the word processor improve on the typewriter, but now the micropublisher, or even the author, could easily venture beyond manuscript preparation into page
layout, cover design and easy duplication and e-distribution. As the internet grew, soon all the elements were in place for much easier entry into the publishing field. The small publisher's big toe could test
the waters of the book's potential audience with far less outlay of cash and time. More importantly, the little guy could bypass the big trade gatekeepers and traditional distribution channels by marketing their books more efficiently directly to their audiences.
With such barriers removed, growth in numbers of titles published has rapidly accelerated to the point where in 2008, on average, over 1,500 books were published in the United States per day.
2.-3. Enter the Two New Models
Of course self-publishing is nothing new, as we have many historical examples of celebrated self-publishers--Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Carl Sandburg, Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, James Joyce, and John Muir, to name a few. But
with the major hurdles lowered by desktop software and the sales opportunites greatly expanded by the internet, the numbers of self-publishing authors have exploded. To
legally become a publisher, one only need declare a publishing company name (some jurisdictions require filed documentation such as a fictitious name statement), and
purchase ISBN's in that name. (It is also possible to publish and distribute books without ISBN's, but generally this does not make sense as sales opportunities for books without ISBN's will be extremely limited.) All ISBN's are non-transferable -- a self-publishing author can only purchase them from the official ISBN agency for their
country, and those numbers permanently reside with that self-publisher. The owner of the ISBN on a book defines legally who the publisher is and who will be contacted
with all orders and administrative inquiries of all kinds, so this model is considered to be true self publishing in the pure sense. The author is the publisher.
With the advent of cheap conversion of a manuscript into publication, not only did self-publishing authors proliferate, but a new breed of
publisher emerged. This new type of publisher, the subsidy, or vanity publisher, is far less concerned with selling books and more concerned with selling publishing
services to aspiring authors. They are confusingly called 'self-publishing companies' by many. Armed with their own staff of designers and knowledge of how to navigate the
publishing industry's checklist of administrative items to publish a book and make it available to sales channels, they seek to attract authors for these services much more
than to sell books. The authors are the profit center for these companies, and can expect to pay between $500 and tens of thousands of dollars to get published. Of
course, if profits are not forthcoming due to meager book sales, then the author must be losing money. This is almost always the case. The nearly universal consensus
among true self-publishers is that these subsidy publishers are a terrible choice for an author hoping to earn any money from his or her craft. The track record of sales success in
this group is abysmal. To make it even worse, many of these so-called 'self-publishing companies' take the lion's share of profit from whatever few books do sell. It's true
that such companies can provide a worthwhile service to an author wanting a professionally designed book without the many tasks involved with true self-publishing, but if profiting from the
book is sought, do not consider them. As for taking on the skilled trades of professional book layout and cover design, the true self-publisher need not worry -- such tasks can be easily farmed out if desired.
|