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You keep hearing (reading) me and others nag and advise on the importance of studying the publishing industry. Do you really need a whole bunch of information about the industry when all you want to do is produce one book as quickly and easily as possible? Absolutely, unless you have a death wish for your book.

Nearly 80 percent of books produced these days sell fewer than 100 copies total. Now what do you think is different about the 20 percent of authors who are selling anywhere from 1,000 to a million or more copies of their books? They were more well-prepared to enter the world of publishing. They are making better decisions on behalf of their books. They are actively promoting their books.

And how did they know these things were necessary? You guessed it! In most cases, they learned something about the publishing industry before getting involved.

Sure, there is the rare (and generally well-publicized) circumstance where an unaware author falls into an amazingly successful situation. There are what appear to be the occasional overnight success. For most of us, however, we must pay our dues. And if we want some measure of success as a published author, it’s imperative that we do our homework.

How does one adequately study the publishing industry?

• Read books by publishing professionals. Let me suggest my latest book, Publish Your Book. It’s at Amazon.com and most other online and downtown bookstore. Also read other books by me (Patricia Fry) as well as Mark Levine, Brian Jud, Dan Poynter, Marilyn Ross, Penny Sansevieri and others

• Subscribe to newsletters, magazines and enewsletters related to the publishing industry. Here are my faves:

Publishing Basic
http://www.publishingbasics.com

Book Marketing Matters
http://www.bookmarketing.com

Book Promotion Newsletter
http://www.bookpromotionnewsletter.com

SPAWNews
Free for anyone
http://www.spawn.org

SPAWN Market Update
Membership in SPAWN required
Join SPAWN at: http://www.spawn.org

• Join writers groups that lean heavily toward book publishing and marketing. Also join online groups such as SPAWN (Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network) http://www.spawn.org

• Attend writers’ conferences. At least attend one—two is even better, if you can manage it. Do an Internet search using keywords, “writers’ conference” and “your city.” Also use the following conference directories to find those that are appropriate. Note: A writers’ retreat is different from a writers’ (or authors’) conference. Check the workshop list and presenters to make sure of the conference’s focus.

http://writing.shawguides.com
http://www.allconferences.com
http://www.newpages.com/writing-conferences

• Follow blogs posted by publishing professionals and successful authors in your genre. Here are a couple of directories that might help you locate blogs that are meaningful to you: And be sure to frequent this blog, as my whole focus is to inform, educate and teach authors and writers.

http://www.blogs-collection.com/directory/writing.php
http://blogs.botw.org
http://www.blogdirectory.net

• Listen to/watch webinars, teleseminars, blog talk radio, podcasts on various aspects of writing, publishing and book promotion. They are all over the Internet.

http://podcastdirectory.com
http://metamosis.com
http://webinarexplorer.com

As you can see, there is no reason why any author should go into the business of publishing without ample knowledge, resources and a healthy understanding of the industry. Sure, it’s going to take time. Definitely, research and study are not the most creative things you could be doing. But if you desire some measure of success as a published author, it is your duty to educate and inform yourself about the industry and your responsibilities as a published author before you take the plunge.

This is day three of my “Authorship is a Business” blog series. Today I want you to concentrate on your audience. In fact, I want you to consider your audience throughout the entire writing, publishing and book promotion process.

By now you should have some understanding of how important it is that you identify your audience early on. That is, the primary target audience for your book. You’ll want to know, what books do they read and why? What periodicals (magazines, enewsletters, etc.) do they read? Where do they buy books? What enticements cause them to buy certain books? Where do they congregate?

This information is valuable when it comes to promoting your book. But it is also important to keep your readers in mind while you’re writing the book so that you are writing the right book for the right audience.

For a how-to, self-help or informational book, be mindful that you include all of the steps needed to follow any instructions. If your writing doesn’t have the clarity needed for an instructional type book, get help with this. If you’re not sure, ask others to read the book and point out any confusing passages.

Some books are more difficult to organize than others—history and reference books, for example. Some people have trouble organizing their memoirs. It may take a few false starts before the sections of the book fall into place. When organization is crucial, study similar books to find out what works and what doesn’t for your particular audience. Consider, are you writing or compiling this book for history buffs, tourists to your hometown, residents who are interested in the history or genealogists? Let your primary audience determine your book’s focus.

Keep your audience in mind as you write your novel so that the end result is coherent, consistent easy to follow and, possibly, fun to read. Stay in your own little world—write what you want without consideration for your readers—and you may end up with a book that is rejected by your audience. One way to make sure you are staying on track is to think about your readers as you write. This should keep you from using obscure words, writing cumbersome sentences, assuming that the reader knows your intention without an explanation, inconsistency in your story and so forth. And don’t forget to consider the entertainment value of your story.

Write what you want, the way you want to write it, never giving a thought to your audience and you could end up with a book that only you love.

Many new authors don’t give their audience much thought until they have a book to sell. They go through the writing process alone, publish the book quickly and then put it up for sale. It isn’t until much later that an author might realize his scattershot method of promotion isn’t working. He isn’t reaching his true audience because he hasn’t even defined them. Perhaps she wrote a straight memoir not knowing that a how-to aspect might have made it more appealing to a wider audience. Maybe he wrote a book for a particular audience—a bulldozer book (one designed to change minds). And his intended audience isn’t interested.

If you are just starting the process of writing a book, identify your audience early on. Don’t assume an audience—get out there and do a serious study to discover what segment of the population is truly interested in your topic or genre.

If you have published a book and it isn’t doing well in the marketplace, consider that maybe you are marketing to the wrong audience. Perhaps I can help. Order my ebook, The Author’s Repair Kit, Heal Your Publishing Mistakes and Breathe New Life Into Your Book. http://www.matilijapress.com/author_repairkit.html

Tune in tomorrow and learn more about how to study the publishing industry—an absolute must for any serious author who hopes to sell more than a dozen or so books.

Are you ready to enter into the business of publishing? If you’re still in the writing stage of producing a book, you may not have given much thought to what comes next. Many hopeful authors envision their books selling like crazy through Amazon and other online and downtown bookstores. You visualize t being ordered by the hundreds for Kindle, Nook and other readers. You imagine waking up every day and finding dozens of orders to fill at your website.

But do you have any idea how you’re going to get from point A (writing the book) to point B (selling truckloads of copies)?

I can tell you that it won’t happen unless you change your writer’s creative mindset and approach the next phase of the process—publishing—with a business head.

Authorship is a business. It takes an informed, educated author to understand the business he or she is entering and to make the best decisions for his or her project. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What are some of the decisions you’ll have to make? Are you well enough informed to handle the following? Before you respond, let me say that publishing, today, is a fiercely competitive business. Are you ready to compete?

• Is your book a valid product—have you written a complete book proposal so that you know you have a viable product and a strong platform?

• Will you attempt to land a traditional royalty publisher for your professionally edited manuscript?

• Do you need agent representation for the publishers appropriate to your project or not? (Many publishers do not require or even invite agent involvement.)

• Is the contract the publisher issued reasonable?

• Will you opt for a pay-to-publish company?

• Which one has the best contract?

• Which one has the least complaints against them?

• What, exactly, can you expect from a pay-to-publish company?

• Will you consider self-publishing—establishing your own publishing company?

• What are the benefits/the downside? Is this book a good candidate for e-publishing?

• What is your responsibility beyond getting the book published? Distribution, promotion, etc?

• Do you know enough about book promotion to understand which services are of value to you and which ones are a waste of your money?

• How does one go about promoting a book like yours? Do you have any idea how difficult promoting a book in this publishing climate is and how creative, energetic and enterprising the author must be?

Can you see the truth in the statement, “Publishing is NOT an extension of your writing?” Writing is a craft and publishing is a business, requiring very different strategies, skills and mindset.

Are you prepared to enter into the world of publishing? If you haven’t spent any time studying the publishing industry, the answer is a resounding, “NO!”

Order my book today in print, on Kindle, Nook or another type of reader. It’s >Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author. It’s at Amazon, at the publisher’s website http://www.allworth.com and at my website: http://www.matilijapress.com

By this, I mean there will be critics. One reviewer will say your book lacks this, another will complain that it should have had more of this. Readers will ask, “Why didn’t you add this or that?” It can be rather frustrating for an author who put so much thought into his/her book, to have their effort, seemingly, disregarded.

You wrote the book for a specific audience. You had a mission in mind when you planned your project. And it seems that some people miss the point of it.

I wrote the history of the Ojai Valley in 1983. I put a lot of thought into the organization of this book, what I would add and how extensive each section would be. I considered my target audience—what they needed and wanted and what I could provide within the space of a reasonable-sized book. As it was, this book included photos and went 360 pages.

Once it was produced, most people responded extremely positively. This was the first comprehensive history ever written about the Ojai Valley, and it was designed to entertain and inform history buffs, long-time residents, former residents, relatives of early pioneers, tourists and researchers. They loved it. But there were a few people who would say, “Why didn’t you include more about this…?” or “I’d like to see more about that.”

I’d tell them, in order to write the complete history of oil exploration in the valley, the geology of the valley, early businesses, early residents, the history of each village in the valley, the postal service, the tourist attractions, art in the valley, the transformation of the village, the fires that swept through here, the churches, etc., it would be in several volumes like a set of encyclopedias.

Over the weekend, I had two new reviews posted at amazon.com for Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author. One of them complimented the book, but also had some criticism because I wasn’t as thorough in the area of technology as she thought I should have been. I thought about her comments and she’s right. The book is not strong in the area of technology. But there are entire books on using technology in producing and promoting books. There are entire books on writing a book proposal, promoting books, getting reviews, etc. Each chapter in my book could be expanded into another complete book. It’s true. But that wasn’t my focus for this project.

As you will see when you get a chance to study this book, it is a crash course for the new and struggling author. It is designed to educate authors on how to more successfully navigate the publishing industry. It touches on everything you need to know. It covers the basics rather thoroughly. And it provides tons of resources, including recommended books and websites, for those who desire additional information in any one topic.

How many books and other resources do you use when studying a subject of interest to you? When conducting research for a book or an article, you don’t use just one source, do you? If you’re a writer, you have more than one book on writing, publishing, book promotion, etc. in your library. And you subscribe to more than one related newsletter, right?

Why is that? Because everyone has a different perspective, level of knowledge and interest. Each author or newsletter publisher has a different focus. And they may all be important to all or a segment of the basic target audience.

I know an author who started writing a book for seniors way back in the early 1980s. She would finish a draft and start showing it around to people. Everyone had a different idea of how the book should be organized. (No surprise there!) And each time she would listen to one of her critics, she went back to the drawing board and rewrote this book. I saw her do this a number of times. Soon the book wasn’t hers, at all. It became a distortion of her original idea and it kept changing with each critique.

I sternly suggested to her one day that she write the book she believes is needed and stop showing it around to other writers (who were not her audience to begin with). Finally, in 2008, she finished writing her book and produced it her way—providing what she knew her audience wanted.

If you’re ready to start your education about the publishing industry and how to fit into it—something you really must understand before you write your book—order Publish Your Book today. It’s at amazon.com and other online and downtown bookstores. It’s on Kindle, Nook and other devises.

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.