Many business people want to have a book published to advertise themselves. I agree that a book is a great tool to give a business person credibility. But I have strong feelings about trying to get published. This is what will happen to you:
You'll send your manuscript to publishers; ones you can convince to receive it. It will sit for months, even years and no one will read it. If they do, they will want you to completely re-write it. Then they will tell you, it's still not good enough to publish. I personally know of three people that happened to, two in Japan and one in America. Publishers are the same the world over it seems.
2022 Note: This recently happened to me on the Japanese translation of How to Live the James Bond Lifestyle. I had it translated, the publisher said, "Make some edits and we'll publish." We did the edits, and then they changed their minds. Three years later, I got it published at another company, and it's now in bookstores.
If you're very lucky, a company will print 1,000 copies, with a bad cover design, send you 20 copies, promise you a percentage of the profits and then send you nothing but receipts for their expenses.
When you want to promote your book, it won't be in the bookstores. When you want your book back to publish it yourself, they will tell you that they own it and will not print any more copies, or give it back to you.
I spoke with author Paul Peterson (The Donna Reed Show). He can't get his book back from the publisher and they won't print more copies, so he has nothing to sign for fans, except photos.
The worst story I heard was in Japan. Movie star Tatsuya Nakadai's wife wrote a book about her husband. She gave it to the largest publisher. They held it seven years without doing anything with it. When she died (young), they immediately published it that week to cash in on her death publicity.
Why go through all the above, when these days, you can put your book on Amazon Kindle and Print on Demand. If you only have your book only on Amazon, they'll give you an ISBN number for free.
There are plenty of professionals that will convert your word file to a Kindle file and upload to Amazon for you.
You can set your own price and gift both the Kindle and print to friends via Amazon. Best of all, your book will never go out of print and you can revise it anytime.
Why wait like Nakadai's wife did? Why not enjoy having your book out now with the cover design, and type style you like?
Gene Simmons of KISS met with a publisher for his Kisstory book, but when he realized they would take him to the cleaners with their endless deductions, he published it himself.
You can market the book via the net and perhaps make a small income on it. Or maybe large income. But profit is not the reason to have a least one book out that represents you, be it auto-biography, fiction, or whatever subject you have passion for.
So, get ready for one of the most exciting and satisfying times of your life. Then, the next time you go into a book store and see all those big books with cool covers, you'll think, "I've got mine too."
And don't forget audiobooks. You can record them yourself on a home set-up or hire a narrator. And if you want to go the distance, add sound effects and music.
Like Captain Ahab said to his first mate: "Money is not the measure, man. It fetches me a great premium here." (He pats his heart.)
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Forbidden Power wins 38 international awards, including:
2018 - Best Picture at the BITB Hollywood Festival, competing with over 1,000 movies.
2019 - Best Science Fiction Feature Film at the International BB Oklahoma Film Festival.
2019 - Best Thriller - London Flicks Film Festival
2019 - Best Feature Film - New York Cinematography Awards
2019 - Best Original Screenplay - Florence Film Awards Italy.
2020 - Best Original Screenplay - New York Movie Awards
