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Approaching Publishers:- any hints?

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jilola

Call the publisher or search the web to find out if the accept unsolicited manuscripts and what they require you to submit with the manuscript.
Also be sure to know what kind of books the publisher is looking for. You don't want to send a science book toa children's publisher.

Usually you'll have to write a cover letter that should introduce yourself and the proposed book, a sample chapter or two, the table of contents if applicable and some research about the competition to your book, ie. where's the book positioned in the market and how does it differ to its advantage.

2cents & L&L
jouni

Nerezza


Adrian

Greetings Tayesin,

I wish you well with your book, but please do not put yourself in a position where you get demoralised by publishers. Publishers these days seem to want guaranteed sales, and that usually means established authors. Over the years, even very famous authors were turned own numerous times until they eventually decided to publish the book themselves. J. K. Rowling was turned down by the first seven publishers for the first Harry Potter book before being accepted!

Publish America seems very good. The way to go these days is print on demand publishers - this is the way of the future. Traditional  typesetting and offset printing is archaic with digital printing now coming into its own. With POD digital printing, the printer keeps a master copy of the entire book as an Adobe PDF file and literally prints them one at a time for orders from people like Amazon.

There are POD printers who will gladly print your book for a one-off setup fee, which is used for the cover design etc.. They distribute the book to all of the major distributors and stores including Amazon and B&N and you can sell millions - the more you sell the more you make, and the royalties are much, much higher than traditional publishing. You also get to keep full title to your book so if it was a success and a large publisher came along wanting to buy it, you can sell it to them without problem.

Just something to keep in mind anyway. Here is probably the best POD publisher:

http://www.1stbooks.com/

It is worth looking through some of the testimonials page. Many authors who have already has books published through traditional publishers are moving to 1st Books Library.

For an example of submission guidelines, here is the page for Llewellyn. I am not suggesting they are worth submitting to, but the guidelines seem to be fairly typical:

http://www.llewellyn.com/gen_sub.htm

Good luck with your book!

With best regards,

Adrian.



https://ourultimatereality.com/
Vincit Omnia Veritas

Tayesin

Hi Again,
Thank you very much for those words of wisdom, I appreciate them greatly. And I will follow up on the links suggested.

When I was 15 yrs old, I was inspired to write this book although I had many years worth of experiences to include in it, so it has been a long time coming. LOL.

Last year I was looking through a bookstore and thought that there were alredy enough of these types of books on the shelves, so I got dis-heartened by that.  Until a friend said to me, "So what, maybe yours is really meant to be published."  As he said that, I 'saw' my little book on the bookstore shelves.  But, it had a different title to the one I had chosen, as well as having completely different artwork than what I had been thinking of too!

This inspired me again.  Then I read about an author who had been knocked back 100 times by various publishers, she too gave up, until her husband convinced her to try one more time.  Guess what happened?  Yes, they accepted her book and published it!

So I decided then and there that even if I had to desktop publish it myself and distribute it, I would.  So that is my back up plan if all else fails. LOL.

Thanx people.  Love always.

PeacefulWarrior

THanks for the info Adrian, I for one found it most useful.  I am working on a book as well.  I am writing now more for practice than anything else however.  When the time comes to try to get published I am definetly going with a place like 1stbooks though.
We shall not cease from our exploration, and at the end of all our exploring, we shall arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T.S. Elliot
---------------
fides quaerens intellectum

Adrian

Greetings PeacefulWarrior,

Yes, the reason traditional publishers are so picky (to use an expression from your side of the Atlantic [:)] )is because their printing costs are so high, and they have to be sure of guaranteed sales to get back their original investment. When you think about it, the entire concept of typesetting and offset printing large runs of thousands of books at a time really belongs in the museums.

Digital printing is so much more advanced. The entire book layout including the cover is stored on a computer in Adobe PDF format, and when someone buys a copy, the print button is pressed, and out pops a fully bound book of higher quality than offset printing. It completely removes the printing risks involved. This technology can print one or a million copies just as easily. There is also no such thing as "out of print" with this technology.

I notice that PublishAmerica uses digital printing, and I guess this is why they take on so many more authors than other publishers.

1st Books Library seem to have it down to a very fine art however, right down to global distribution and sales to Amazon, B&N and the thousands of regular book stores arohnd the world. The royalities are also much higher by orders of magnitude compared to traditional publishers. Yes, there is a setup fee involved for the cover design etc., but sell a couple of hundred copies of your book and you are in profit.

Good luck with your authoring work!

With best regards,

Adrian.
https://ourultimatereality.com/
Vincit Omnia Veritas

Donni_Joy

Tayesin,

if you have your dream, keep at it.... because the dream can be more real than the real world (until the real world catches up to it!) It took me over 5 years to get my book published, but I had the strongest conviction it would, just KNEW it. It was hard work, disheartening at times, but if you have that KNOWING and can think out of the box when approaching publishers, than you'll get there (theoretically anyway.)

I also self-published a book which was a great learning experience. Adrian's links look great!

Best of luck,
Donni
"A balance of perspective must be maintained in order to preserve reasonable logic and truth." Robert the Brute, 2002

SpectralDragon

If you are close to a borders, go the the writing section, and look for "2003 writers market" (unless 2004 is out...?)
it is the BEST way to get to publishers. It tells the the adress and sometimes phone# of the publisher, how to write a letter, what they are looking for, and what the publishers require. If the publisher requires something most do not, it will tell you that too. Insert[:D]

Oh, and information about the book would be nice... what pen name are you using?

the_demigod

In the UK a book called "the *year* writer's handbook" is a very good pile of info.
They update it anually since the pubnlishers tend to vanish and new ones appear.

In terms of fiction stuff, they usually expoect a submission in the form of a synopsis [1 page] and 3 sample chapters.
Now, I haven't heard of someone submitting just ANy 3 chapters so I assume its usualy the first 3.

The publisher's READER has a go and makes a judgement cal on the basis of your skills as illustarted by the chapters and the overall "story promise" based on the synopsis.

Most readers are cynical sods, so...don't get your hopes up.

Case and point--a prestigious writers award in the UK [the Booker prize] is given to really GOOD authors. Funnily enough those writers that WIN are NEVER selected to be published by the big houses.

The Print-on-demand is still seen as "vanity publishing", i.e. you forking out money to get yourself a book with your name on it.
I've heard of a guy or two that DID get the "proper" contracts once a publisher saw the first [a POD] book in a small shop, liked it and called the author asking "you got anything new cooking??"

and so it goes....
Vendi, Vidi, Vici, Mucho denero.
[I came, I saw, I conquered, I got paid--my mercenary motto]

Tayesin

Hi Again people,

Has anyone got some hints on approaching publishers with a manuscript?  My book is almost finished and half is edited by a lady who has much experience in the field of preparing manuscripts, but not in the approach to take from there.

So any suggestions would be gratefully appreciated.
Thanx.