Lonnie Hicks, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Lonnie Hicks
How to Publish that Book and Not Lose Your Soul- day two 2/9/2010 11:12:56 AM
Survival Tools and Hard Truths February 9, 2010
The first step in the decision tree is to decide what your goals are in publishing. That will influence which companies or folks in the publishing environment you will choose to work with in seeking that goal.
If you just want to publish something for family or friends, say a geneology, then your path is very different than one seekiing commerical success, world-wide recognition and loads of money.
The pesonal publishing goal is one where don't particularly care about the number of books sold, you just wnat something for the family to have or to put on the bookshelf for the grandkids to read later on. The path here is simple: I would recommend self-publishing with a local print on demand printer. Cost is about five-. seven dollars per copy and you can order one copy at a time. What is involved is decisions about the cover you will use, editing the books (grammar matters even at this level) and the issue of whether or not to copyright the material, and whether or not to get an ISBN number for it, in case you decide to publish it broadly.
Those decisions made you get your book back and you decide it is handsome indeed and you want to put it out for sale just to get your investment back. In this area, (let's assume self-publishling here) you have many choices. Let's step into the self-publishing world. Step lightly.
Self-publishers are all over the internet and offer you everything from covers, book interiors, place on search engines, adds in trade papers, book fairs, marketing services, publicity services, help with major book publishers, all of course, for a price, and of course, there is no guarantee that your investment of 600-5,000 dollars will produce a single sale. Yep. Imagine paying the local mechanic 5,000 dollars and your car does not get fixed. So, you ask what am I paying for if I likey end up with sales of under ten books (the average?) Well you get educated in the publishing business and you get satisfaction and braggiing rights on the block as being an "author."
Humm, is that enough for you? If so you can stop reading here. If not, read on.
Now you want to sell some books and make some money. One advantage is that if you invest in selling some books with a self-publisher you can expect to put a considerable sum of your own money in the deal and it will take substantial amounts of time because self-publishers don't do anything for you basically except produce the books and charge you for them. The rest will be entirely up to you. Remember the rule of publishing is no book is worth much if it is not marketed and publiciized. Major companies will spend miillions on this facet of the game and movie companies spend lots more. Marketing in a mass market is queen and king combined.
So tommrow we present David and Goliah in the publishing ring. What will be the outcome? Humm....
