Writing and Publishing News from

What do you need/want most from your writers group or publishing organization? Now I’m serious! I want your comments. I want to know what your needs are as a writer/author.

Do you join groups/organizations for the peer support—you find it empowering to be with like-minded people who understand your passion and your challenges?

Is it information you are after?

Would you like to join an organization where a benefit is one-on-one help/guidance with your project?

Do you want specific direction rather than the opportunity to network?

Perhaps you are seeking promotional opportunities.

Maybe you want someone to find you an eager agent/publisher for your project.

If you were to design the perfect organization that will meet your publishing needs, what would it look like? Now be reasonable. What do you want in an organization that is possible to provide and what are you willing to pay for it?

I’ll post responses anonymously in an upcoming post.

You can leave your comment here or email me at PLFry620@yahoo.com. Put “Perfect Organization” in the subjectline.

When we go to big events like the recent Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, we get a lot of visitors to our booth and they ask a lot of questions. Common questions are, “I want to publish my story, how do I go about it?” “I want to write my memoir, what is the procedure?” or “I’ve written a manuscript, what do I do next?” Perhaps you have similar questions.

So today, I’ve outlined some steps that might help you through the publishing process:

Step One: Think through your book subject or genre. Is this something that is needed or wanted? Does your nonfiction book idea respond to a challenge that many people face? Will it help people adopt a new/healthier way to think about something or live? Does it offer solutions that others might not have thought of? For fiction, is it a genre that is popular or that has a strong niche audience?

Conduct your own research to discover the answers to these questions. Use the Internet to find out if your subject is viable. Look at books offered at online as well as downtown bookstores on this topic. Is the idea being well-covered or is there something more you can add that would be useful? Is there an interest in books in your genre? Why would anyone want to read your memoir?

Step Two: Follow Step One with a wide open mind and the thought processes of a businessperson. Once you’ve uncovered the absolute truth about the topic or theme of the book you propose, use it to plan a more viable book—the one more people will likely buy. This may require you stepping down from your high horse, humbling yourself and letting go of your attachment to your original story or nonfiction book.

Step Three: Study the publishing industry before writing even one word. Well, you can be practicing your writing skills and techniques. Practice, practice, practice. In the meantime, however, read books on the subject of publishing, subscribe to newsletters related to the industry, attend writers’ conferences and writers’ group meetings and join publishing organizations.

Step Four: Write a book proposal. This process will teach you volumes about your project, your audience, your responsibilities as a published author, your abilities and aptitude for succeeding in this business and how you can make your particular book a success.

Step Five: Start writing the book. If you’ve absorbed all of the wisdom available out there, you are now ready to write the right book for the right audience.

Step Six: Hire a good book editor to fine-tune your manuscript.

Step Seven: Seek a publisher. In Step Three, you studied the publishing industry, which means that you became familiar with your publishing options, the possible consequences of your choices and your responsibilities as a published author. By now, you should have a clear idea of the best publishing option for your project. If you haven’t done so already, do some stringent Internet research to discover if these publishers are legit, they have acceptable contracts and they offer exactly what you want/need. This is no time for assumptions or impatience. These two postures have created more publishing failures than you can imagine.

Step Eight: Plan your marketing strategy. In fact, prepare for a lifetime of promotion. In other words, prepare to promote your book for as long as you want it to sell. Stop promoting and your book will most likely die.

What happens if you do not follow these eight important steps? What if you continue down your original path and produce the book of your dreams, even though your research demonstrates that there probably isn’t a market for it? What happens if you avoid studying the publishing industry and decide to just wing it? Millions of people do so every year. And they fail. In fact, nearly 80 percent of all books sell fewer than 100 copies total.

If you are serious about producing a book of value to a segment of people and presenting it to your audience, you must enter into this business with knowledge, information and realistic expectations.

Two useful books for authors at any stage of their projects are:
Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author and Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. http://www.matilijapress.com

Also available at Amazon.com, B&N.com and most other online and downtown bookstores.

As authors, we tend to want things our way. We want to write what we want to write and present it to our public in a fashion that suits us. Do you know any other business where you can do that and survive?

I heard it again yesterday—“I know someone who is an amazing writer. She came out with a book, but she doesn’t want to bother with promoting it. She just wants to do what she does best—write. So how does my friend get her book out there?”

It’s almost an oxymoron—you write to be read, but you don’t want to tell anyone about your book. You want your readership to know you, but you don’t want to know them. You don’t want to reach out to them. You have this fantasy that they will find your book among the millions of others without your help. Something is very wrong with this picture.

Personality sells books, I tell you. Readers, today, want a relationship with the author. In fact, they rarely know a book exists until the author or a friend tells them about it. How does the author get word out? Through public appearances, meeting people at book festivals, submitting articles/stories to appropriate publications, having an Internet presence—in other words, showing up where his audience congregates, where he hangs out on the Internet and in what he reads.

And when should this author introduction begin? As soon as you know you are going to write a book. In fact, you can start the process by blogging. Use Twitter to invite people who are interested in your topic/genre to your blog. Also write articles/stories for the publications your audience reads. Build a website featuring your book sometime before your book is a book. Continue to build an amazing email list and use it to create an interested audience for your enewsletters, for example. Connect in some way with established websites related to your subject/genre. Participate in popular forums and discussion groups within that realm.

What you want, dear author, doesn’t matter. Authorship is sort of like parenthood. You may want a baby for you. But once the child is here, it is all about him/her. Likewise, you may want to enjoy the process of writing a book and dream of selling millions to interested readers everywhere. But once the book is born, it becomes all about your audience. That’s where you must focus your energies and creativity.

Prepare mentally for this reality. Start the process of becoming known in your field/genre. Begin, now, developing a readership.

For serious assistance with the process of becoming a successful author in a horrendously competitive and difficult publishing industry, read my latest book: Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author.

http://www.matilijapress.com Also available at amazon.com and most other online and downtown bookstores.

Certainly, you are reading this not because you want to fail, but in order to know what NOT to do. Take the opposite road from those presented below and you will have a much better chance at publishing success.

1: Sit down and write a book without giving one thought to its purpose, your reason for writing it and your audience.

2: Decide from the get-go that you will not waste any time at writers’ group meetings, writers’ conferences and the like.

3: Avoid information and material that might shed some light on the processes involved with successful publishing.

4: Do not hire an editor for your manuscript. After all, you prepare reports at work all the time, you know how to write.

5: Create your own cover design. It doesn’t really matter what the cover looks like, anyway.

6: Have unrealistic expectations. In other words, expect to see your book for sale at bookstores nationwide. Expect to appear on major TV shows. And expect to sell thousands of copies each week without really trying.

7: Go with the first pay-to-publish company that expresses an interest in your project (which will be the first one you approach).

8: Don’t read or understand the contract and don’t question the large sum of money the company wants up front. Take the attitude that all of these companies must be the same.

9: Avoid anything that resembles promotion. You don’t have time to promote your book and you probably don’t have to. Once people see it, they will buy it without question.

10: Blame everyone else when your book fails. And write another book for publication using this same “lack of” strategy.

If you would rather experience success, then order your copy of Publish Your Book: Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author. Herein, you will learn what TO do, when, how, why and more. It’s on Kindle, Nook and other readers. It’s also in print at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, other online and downtown bookstore as well as the publisher’s and the author’s websites.
http://www.allworthpress.com

http://www.matilijapress.com

Producing book is like establishing a business. There are decisions to make and details to take care of. So what is the process? Here’s a list:

• Just as you would choose a business that is needed/wanted by a large customer base, you would choose a book topic/genre that has a large or solid niche audience.

• Before opening a business, you would know something about your customers, suppliers, distributors, competition, laws/rules/policies. Thus, an important first step in producing a book is to study the publishing industry. Among your library, be sure to read Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author. And subscribe to the most useful newsletters—many of them are FREE. (I’ll repeat my list of best newsletters for authors in tomorrow’s blog post.)

• You would write a business plan for a business. A book proposal is a business plan for a book and an extremely important step. Not only do most traditional publishers now want to see a book proposal for fiction as well as nonfiction, the book proposal will teach you volumes about your project and how to successfully proceed with it.

• In business, you would make sure you have the right qualifications, skills, established customer base and connections related to your business of choice. As an author who will be responsible for promoting and marketing your book, you will need a strong platform (a following, connections and promotional skills, for example).

• An understanding of your responsibilities as the owner of a particular business is vital to the health of that business. In publishing, it is highly important that you understand and accept the fact that, no matter which publishing option you choose, you are responsible for promoting your book.

• A successful businessman/woman learns new skills and comes up with fresh ideas for enticing and serving customers. Authors, too, must be enterprising and flexible in order to adequately accommodate their audiences.

• In any business, there is always something to learn and new decisions to make. A successful published author keeps abreast of new developments within his/her industry/genre as well as the publishing industry and adjusts to use this new information to their advantage.

If you don’t view authorship as a serious business, you could be sabotaging your book’s success. Seriously, read my book, Publish Your Book, to get an overview of your role and your responsibilities as a published author and to gain clarity on how to navigate the fiercely competitive publishing industry. http://www.matilijapress.com Also available at amazon.com.

“What’s the best way to publish a book?”

This is a question I get fairly often from authors who are close to finishing a book manuscript and eager to get it out to their readers. Indeed, what is the best way to go about getting your book published? Here’s my pat answer:

“It depends on your book and it depends on you.”

Not exactly satisfying, as answers go, is it? In my book, Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author, I give you all of your publishing options, the possible negative (and positive) consequences of your choices and I firmly remind you of your responsibilities as a published author.

Before choosing a publisher or even a type of publisher or publishing—traditional (major, fairly well known, small, niche), pay-to-publish or self publishing—I help you to determine the pros and cons of each with regard to your project.

For example, if you are in a hurry to get 2,000 copies of your business book in your hands for an upcoming conference, you may want to go with a pay-to-publish company.

If you, your professional book editor, other credible writers and your friend’s agent believe that you have something really special to offer a large segment of readers, you may want to solicit an agent and have him/her approach the major publishers. You can always send your proposal to some of the many viable medium-size publishing houses if you don’t snag one of the big guys.

If you have written a niche book, a how-to, reference or informational book for a specific audience, and you want to go the traditional route, the reasonable tactic is to seek out niche publishers in your genre/topic. I mean, be reasonable, Harper Collins would not entertain the thought of publishing an ordinary yard sale manual or how to get your baby to burp book, now would they?

If you have received rejection letters from dozens and dozens of publishers, you might want to consider rethinking your project. Have you done the research necessary to determine its viability in the marketplace? Is there something you could change to make it more viable—add a how-to aspect to it, strengthen your characters and work on your dialog, etc.? You might start by working with a book editor.

The pay-to-publish scenario might be right for you and your book IF you will do your homework. Read Mark Levine’s book, The Fine Print of Self-Publishing, and learn which ones have the best contract and are most aboveboard in their dealings with authors. Take the time to compare several of them. Compare prices and promises. And if you decide to go with one, make sure all promises are in writing. I can’t tell you how many authors I meet who have lost practically everything because they did not understand that the publisher would not take responsibility for promoting and selling their books and who could not or would not take on this responsibility themselves.

The reason I have reservations about new authors choosing a pay-to-publish company is because so many of them go into publishing without looking out for themselves. They blindly follow the company wherever it wants to take them without even considering their alternatives—without doing their homework—without doing enough research. Then they are disappointed when their unrealistic expectations aren’t realized.

If you want to go with a pay-to-publish company (they call themselves self-publishing companies)—and some of them masquerade as traditional publishers—you’ll need to do tons and tons of research about the company, other such companies and the entire publishing industry. You’ll particularly want to have a complete understanding as to your responsibility as a published author.

In the case of a pay-to-publish company, you put up the money and they produce your book. Generally, you will receive a few books free and then you can purchase copies of your book at an agreed upon rate. The fee often prohibits authors from putting their books in bookstores paying for space at book festivals, etc.

The author is responsible for promoting his/her book no matter which publishing option he/she chooses.

Self-publishing means that you establish your own publishing company. You get a fictitious business name, you arrange for the ISBN, you have the cover designed, you hire the printer, etc. You are the publisher of record. You put up all of the money, and you get all of the profits.

I have self-published many of my books. I like having the control. I worked with a co-publishing company on one book project for a client. I went with a pay-to-publish company for one of my ebooks. And I have books published through traditional publishing companies. I choose the publishing option based on my expectations for the individual book. And this is what you should do, as long as your expectations are realistic.

To learn more about how to choose a publisher, what each publisher can bring to the table, etc. read my book, Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author. It’s at Amazon.com and other online bookstores, downtown bookstores and at my website: http://www.matilijapress.com