Source: http://adzines.com/Book-Marketing-Articles/Book-Publishing-Without-Pain/6459

When I meet an author with a great book concept, one who’s definitely the right person to write that book, right away I’ll often encourage her to self-publish. This is because I know that, if that author is thoroughly invested in what she has to say, and if she is determined to create a buzz about her message, she’ll discover

5 Fantastic Benefits of Self-publishing

1. Control. When you enter into a contract with a major publishing house, you’re signing an exclusive agreement that prevents your having input into most of the important decisions that will affect your book’s perception by the public, and its sales. You’ll have very little say about the look and feel of your book cover, the endorsements that appear on the back of your book, or the wording of your press release, for example. And since all of the above elements are critical to giving your book its best chance for bestseller status, such loss of control can pose significant problems. “But don’t publishers know better than I what to do to sell a book?” you may ask. Not necessarily. Authors usually know more about their book’s subject-and hence, about their target audience (market)-than anyone else. Hey, they wrote the book!

More food for thought about signing with a major publishing house: If for some reason your book doesn’t sell quickly and the publisher lets it go out of print, there’s often a “waiting period” before the author is allowed to self-publish the book to get it back on the shelves. In the meantime, the reading public sees that your book is “out of print” and a great deal of word-of-mouth damage is done. Self-publishing means that you are at the helm of your book project. Of course, it also means that the responsibility for its success rests in your hands. But when you believe in your message and know that you’re going to do everything in your power to get that message out to your target audience, isn’t it a good feeling to know that you’re the one driving its success in the marketplace?

I suggest a balance of control and delegation. The right publishing ally can coach you through the process of writing and editing your book, and will also advise you to design and market your message in a way that gets optimum results. Your publishing ally may be a book editor, a publishing consultant, a published author, or all three. If she’s worth her salt, though, she’ll know what it will take to get your book published, and she’ll know how to help you make it happen. Reputable help can be found in Literary Market Place (online or in your local library). LMP is the publishing industry’s by-nomination-only directories–here you’ll find book editors and publishing consultants with a proven track record.

2. Money. Why does it make good business sense to self-publish? Consider the following: a contract with the book publisher doesn’t give you an ironclad guarantee that your book will ever and upon the shelves. If you’re a new author, your publisher will allocate zero marketing dollars to promote your book. It’s sink or swim! If your book does sell well, it will be due to your own hard work and ingenuity-and your reward will be a tiny fraction of the book’s total profits. Self-publishing admittedly involves more capital risk, but it also means that the extensive footwork you do to market your book will go to producing income for the person who most deserves it. After all, you’re the one who’s doing all the work to ignite word-of-mouth about your book. Not only that, you wrote it! Don’t you deserve to reap 100% of the profit?

Makes sense, doesn’t it? One of the greatest perks I experience collaborating with authors is seeing our self-published books consistently create more reader excitement and interest than their traditionally published counterparts.

3. No Waiting, No Rejection. The Cinderella story of the little book that gets discover by a publisher and becomes an overnight bestseller is mostly just that-a fairytale. Yes , it happens. But it hasn’t been happening a whole lot lately. In the current publishing climate, with major houses paying gigantic advances to celebrity authors-their “cash cows”-not much is left to spend on developing new talent. Let’s be honest: a publisher isn’t going to spend a dime marketing a book by an as yet unknown author. To get your book considered for publication in the first place, you’ll need to have an extremely convincing marketing strategy in place which you intend to implement on your own, at your own expense! Such as the case in every genre from children’s books to alternative health to historical novels. First-time authors are being turned away en masse. And since many nonfiction book projects are time-sensitive-well-placed offerings intended to respond to a specific market trend-their authors often while way their precious window of opportunity waiting for agents or publishers to respond to a proposal. It isn’t impossible to get a major publishing house interested in a book by a first-time author, but it’s getting more difficult all the time. Self-publishing removes the wait (and the accompanying weight from your shoulders) and the discomfort of rejection from the process of getting your book into print.

Why wait? And why bother wading through a mountain of rejections?

4. Independence. Self-published authors are usually people with confidence in their message. Many have already developed a following by giving talks and seminars in areas where they live and work. Experts know when they have a powerful personal message-they don’t need a publisher’s approval to pump themselves up. Such authors, many of whom are already seasoned professionals, self-publish their books because they love being in the driver’s seat of their book project. Rather than gamble that a big corporation will treat their book with the respect it deserves, such an author takes the publishing reins to ensure that her message reaches the widest possible audience.

No one cares more about your book than you do. Get someone on your side who will help you get your book the attention it deserves. A good editorial and publishing consultant knows how to

• make your book irresistible and
• market your book efficiently and effectively to your target audience.

5. Power of Belief. The power of belief in our words is what makes promises good and turns dreams into reality. Authors who self-publish their books believe deeply that others will benefit from reading what they have to say. They have unshakable conviction. Such authors often tell me, “I had to write this book. I just have to get it out there!” Deep belief is the selfless power that drives all true service and makes a difference in the world. Authors with a strong sense of purpose know that they can make their books succeed. They don’t want to wait around for a publishing house to “accept” their work. Aware that time is precious, such authors create their own publishing opportunities. They get behind their own message. They launch a campaign fueled with belief in the creative power of intention.

A good publishing consultant knows that the best way to make your book a true success is to help you create and market a message that both of you will be proud of for years to come. Creating uplifting books is a passion. Make it yours, and every one of your books sold will be a vote of confidence in humanity.

Copyright ©2005 Ceci Miller

Ceci Miller is President of CeciBooks Editorial & Publishing Consultation, a firm with a world-class professional marketing and design team devoted to creating uplifting, first-quality books and giving those books their best chance of success in the market. CeciBooks Editorial & Publishing Consultation is listed in Literary Market Place. Please visit http://www.CeciBooks.com or call 206.706.9565 for a half-hour consultation at no charge.

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source: http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/104741/publishing/secrets_to_getting_published.html

By: D.l. Wilson

Getting published in today’s competitive fiction market is as easy, or difficult, as learning the 3Rs-Reading, wRiting, and Research. But it also involves three words that are key to the process-persistence, persistence, persistence. Just as a budding musician doesn’t get to play at Carnegie Hall without tremendous dedication and practice, a writer doesn’t get into print without similar commitments.

Master the Craft

Creating a marketable novel requires learning and mastering the craft of writing. Many budding authors have studied English and writing in high school, or even college, and assume that’s a sufficient platform for writing a blockbuster novel. To reach the level of quality required to be published in today’s competitive market, writers must re-visit the basics of grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, prose, and dialogue.

Interviews with three top fiction editors provided a sneak peak at why mastering the craft of writing is much more important than it may have been ten or twenty years ago. Back then, editors were responsible for publishing 12 to 15 novels a year. That gave them almost a month per novel to review submissions, select manuscripts for publication, line edit, copy edit, work with graphic designers to create cover designs, work with interior text designers, and work with marketing teams and publicists. If editors detected potential in the creative work of manuscripts that didn’t meet their craft standards, they could work with new writers to hone their craft over a few novels. In today’s high pressure publishing empires, editors are often responsible for 30 to 60 novels a year. That can leave less than a week for editors to perform all of the functions necessary to bring a novel to bookstores. Increased focus by publishers on higher earnings for novels has also put a crimp on editors being able to guide new authors into developing a large enough readership to get out of the mid-list. Editors no longer have the luxury of sufficient time to develop the blockbuster novelists their publishers crave. They need high quality, well-written, nearly craft-perfect manuscripts from the first submission. This requires manuscripts to be highly edited and close to publishable when editors receive them.

A key factor in mastering the craft is READING. Read successful novels in your genre to determine what makes them “must reads.” Analyze their structure, writing style, plotting, and basic concepts to get a feel for what makes a successful novel in today’s ever changing marketplace. Reading should be an important element in the work habits of writers. In order to analyze the structure of a novel, an analysis form that identifies: chapter and scene including the number of pages per scene, time frame, basic story line in the scene, point of view character, characters on stage, tension/conflict, setting, and general comments can be very helpful. Such an analysis form allows a writer to get a feel for the structure and content of a novel. As a thriller writer it is important that I include powerful tension/conflict in each scene and that each scene ends with a hook to keep the reader engaged.

Joining writing groups or critique groups that include writers in your genre is an excellent means of getting valuable input for improving your craft as well as evaluating your creative skills. It is important to remember that writing is a subjective art form. There can be dramatic variations in reviews of a writer’s work. That’s why it’s important for writers to be open to all forms of constructive criticism. Criticism can be painful, but it is vital in fine tuning a writer’s efforts to become a successful author. The bottom line is in the hands of the writer, the author of a work of fiction. The end result which will make or break a work of fiction was well expressed by a highly successful agent, “it boils down to the words on the page.” Every word is a creative expression by the author. A writer must evaluate any critical comments and should compare comments by as broad a segment of readers as possible. This allows placing appropriate weight on any constructive criticism allowing the writer to make an informed decision on what he/she determines to be in the best interest of making the novel a great read.

Develop a Writing Technique

Different authors have different techniques in the way they approach creating their masterpieces. Some authors develop detailed scene-by-scene outlines while others work from a basic concept and let their muse guide them. Writers must find the writing format that works best for them. There is no “best technique.” But it is important to develop a technique that has a structure that results in the best possible novel. The only way to do that is by WRITING. Very few authors I have met have had their first work of fiction published. Just like a surgeon works on many cadavers before making the transition to a live human patient, writers must practice, practice, practice before turning out the gem that transforms them into a published author. Once they have learned the craft, they must merge it with a successful creative concept. This may require a few efforts to fine tune the entire process.

Before starting down the road to writing the blockbuster novel, a writer should create a short, one page, concept sheet for the proposed work of fiction. This could turn out to be the hardest aspect of writing a novel, but it is the most critical in today’s market. Most readers have been conditioned by our current sound-byte mentality. Just like TV or radio ads, authors must get their point across in a fifteen or thirty second sound-byte. This involves a tightly structured one-half to one page easy to understand synopsis. This short synopsis will be the key to capturing the attention of an agent, and later, an editor. For a thriller, the concept should be simple, yet dynamic. It must capture the fascination of anyone who reads it, drawing them into wanting to read the entire novel.

Once the concept has been fine tuned, it’s time to put into practice the writing technique that works best for the author. If it’s the scene-by-scene outline, it may take a lot of work to develop and fine-tune the material before the actual writing process begins. But the end result may minimize the countless hours spent in editing and re-writing. For the writer who works from a basic concept, the writing may begin immediately after the concept sheet is finished or from an expanded five to ten page synopsis.

No matter which method is used, when the initial manuscript is finished it is critical for the writer to put on the editing cap and carefully analyze the manuscript for content, consistency, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, prose, and dialogue. Since today’s market is so competitive and the focus on perfection by agents and editors so great, it is well worth the investment to hire a freelance editor with good credentials to edit your work before going to the next phase in the publishing process, finding an agent.

Find an Agent

In today’s fiction market, you need a good agent. Almost all editors with the best publishing houses DO NOT accept unagented submissions. To quote a top editor, “Writers absolutely need to find an agent, and they need their agent to help them address the basic protocols. It’s because a writer’s manuscript is going to get a very limited number of opportunities. Within each house there are many editors, and if you submit a manuscript to the wrong editor, you’ve just blown your chance. It’s the agent’s job to get to know the editors well enough to know exactly who to send each manuscript to.”

To find the right agent requires the third R, RESEARCH. You should know some of the clients the agent represents, and particularly those who write in a vein similar to your own. From your reading, you should check the acknowledgments pages of the books in your genre that you enjoy reading. Authors often acknowledge their agents. Another good resource is the Internet and sites like Publishers Marketplace (www.publishersmarketplace.com) that identify the agents and contract information for books that have been sold to publishers.

When you have identified agents who have a respectable reputation for selling novels in your genre, research their submission requirements and follow them to the letter. Be sure your manuscript is as good as it can possibly be. Don’t use any gimmicks when sending out chapters or entire manuscripts. The bottom line is; gimmicks don’t sell novels. An agent must like your work if he or she is going to represent you with a passion that will get you published. When you start soliciting agents don’t forget the other three words-persistence, persistence, persistence.

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Source: http://www.liberalartscolleges.org/blog/2010/10-reasons-why-a-paperback-is-better-than-an-e-reader/

Until recently, nothing has challenged traditional reading quite as much as the introduction of the e-reader, an electronic reading device that displays books in a digital format. E-readers have catered to the changing times and rise of technology with lightweight designs, Internet access and having your own personal electronic library on the go. What e-readers don’t have is the longevity and simplicity of paperbacks that can be read anywhere, anytime. It’s truly hard to replace the feel, smell and beauty of a bound book, but it’s up to the readers to determine the fate of paperback books. Here are 10 reasons why a paperback is better than an e-reader:

* No Wi-Fi needed

With paperbacks, you don’t have to worry about connecting to the Internet to read your favorite romance novel, or download the latest New York Times best sellers. With ebooks, you’ll need a wireless hookup to browse the online libraries and buy or download books. For older e-reader versions, you have to connect to a computer to download ebooks on the Internet, which means more hassle and more reading time taken away for technology purposes.

* No charging necessary

Paperbacks are fully charged and fully functional all the time. There’s no battery included, no charging required and they have an unlimited shelf life. With e-readers, you may have a battery life of two weeks or less before they go kaput during a road trip when you’re halfway through a book. Not to mention, the life span of an e-reader is probably only a couple years.

* Inexpensive

Paperback books are far more economical than e-readers, which can put you out upwards of $400 to $500, not including the cost of downloading ebooks and additional gadgets. Depending on where you shop, you may spend a few dollars or $20 dollars on a book that can be passed on to friends, bought back by a bookstore or donated. Also, there’s always the option of checking out books from the library at no cost to you.

* Travels easily

Traveling with e-readers can be a huge hassle, especially in airports, because you have to remove your device from its case and send it through the security check separately. A book takes no time to scan and can be left in your bag because it doesn’t require a separate check. E-readers can’t be used on the plane when the captain tells passengers to turn off all electronic devices, but paperbacks can be read during any flight time.

* You can recycle, donate and sell back books

Paperbacks can be recycled, donated or sold to a bookstore, resale shop, school, church and anywhere else books are needed. You can sell back books and get more than half of your money back in online marketplaces, bookstores or book sales. Because electronic reading devices are so new and expensive, they won’t be donated or recycled any time soon.

* Read whenever, wherever

Whether you’re in a park, on the subway or floating in a swimming pool, you can safely read a paperback book, without worrying that you’ll be $400 down the drain. The portability of paperbacks far exceeds the portability of ebooks because they are battery-free, durable and don’t require Internet access. Paperbacks can survive coffee spills, days at the beach and being dropped in a puddle, whereas the electronic competitor would be a goner in no time.

* No eye strain or blinding glare

You won’t have to worry about eye strain after reading a paperback, nor will you have a LCD screen blinding you. Sure, you can adjust the brightness of the e-reader’s screen, but there is no backlight included for reading in the dark.

* No technical problems

E-readers can be defective and have annoying software problems that disrupt your reading. Paperbacks don’t experience technical problems, software bugs or crashes. Paperback books are simple and technology-free, which makes them user-friendly for any age.

* Illustrations

Illustrations have an important role in children’s books, cookbooks and how-to books to guide the reader and aid in storytelling. Book illustrations provide a visual representation of what’s happening in the story and it breaks up the monotony of text. Some ebooks don’t contain illustrations or omit images that aren’t referred to at great length in the text. E-readers just don’t have the same artistic elements that books have.

* Unlimited borrowing and lending

Depending on your personal lending policy, there is usually no limit to how long you let a friend borrow your book. With many e-readers, you have a maximum amount of days you can borrow a book before it goes back to its rightful owner or has to be check out again. The ease of borrowing and checking out books from the library makes paperbacks a more convenient process.

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by Irene Watson

source: http://www.sellingbooks.com/how-to-price-your-book

Finding an appropriate price for your book can be a delicate balancing act—you need to set it high enough to make a profit, yet not too high to dissuade readers from buying. With a little research and an understanding of what customers perceive as being of value, authors can find a price that will work for them and their readers.

The other day I was talking to an author who had written a short historical book of about 100 pages. The book was priced at $29.99. I suggested to the author that her book was overpriced. She responded by saying, “What price should I charge for my three years of research and writing?”

This author’s response made it clear that she was looking to get a return for the work she put into writing the book, and that is understandable, but she failed to consider what her readers are willing to pay. If authors want a return on their work, they need to get it through the quantity of books sold, and less so on individual copies. When a potential customer looks at a 100 page book, he is not going to see that it took three hours to research. He’s going to see 100 pages, which will take him about two hours to read. $29.99 is a lot of money for two hours of entertainment when you can go to a movie for about $8. How much is two hours of entertainment or information worth? I would have priced the book maybe at $14.99 myself, but the author clearly thought her information was worth more. I will give her that her book is the only one I know of on the topic so some people might be willing to pay more for the information in it, but I don’t think too many will want to pay $29.99.

I once attended a conference where several bookstore owners discussed how authors could work with bookstores to sell their books. Two of the owners disagreed about whether the price of a book mattered. One owner said that if people wanted what you had to sell, they would pay what you asked. (In the case of this history author, because her information was new, that might be the case. I doubt it would be, however, in the case of a fantasy author when there are thousands of fantasy titles to choose from.) The other bookstore owner pointed out that people will tend to buy the less expensive book if there are two on the same subject, unless the more expensive book appears to be of higher quality to make it worthwhile.

Higher quality might mean a hardback book, or it might mean something beyond text such as pictures, graphics, or colored photographs. A 100 page coffee table book or a graphic novel can be sold for a higher price because they are perceived as having higher quality because of their attractive look and that they have more than just straight text.

So just how do you determine an appropriate price? The best thing authors can do is to visit a bookstore to compare books similar to their own. It is better to go to a physical bookstore, not an online one, because then you can see and touch the books and compare them side-by-side. For example, if you’ve written a fantasy novel, look at the other fantasy novels in terms of content, size, and price and try to price yours somewhere in the middle. Granted, if you’re self-publishing, you may not be able to compete with the $6.99 mass market paperbacks put out by big fantasy publishers like TOR, but perhaps you can sell your book for $12.99 to out-price the hardback fantasy novels and the larger sized novels.

In general, it is best to price your book in the middle price range. You don’t want to overprice your book so people won’t buy it, but neither do you want to price it lower than most of the other books in your genre, especially if it’s self-published, because readers might dismiss your book as not being of value.

Some cases do exist for pricing your book on the higher end. If you are an established author in your subject matter and have already had some success with previous books so that customers will be loyal to you despite the price (within reason of course: you might get away with $29.95 when your past books were $25.95 but charging $39.95 may turn customers away). In the case of the history author above, she might be able to sell her book for $19.99 because its subject matter is unique, but I still think $29.99 is too high.

When setting price, you also need to take into account your cost, your profit, and what profit you will end up giving to bookstores or book distributors. For example, if you pay $5 a copy to print your books, is $19.99 a good price for selling them? A bookstore will want 40%, leaving you with $11.99 for the sale, a profit of $6.99—still more than double your investment. A book distributor will want 55%, leaving you with $9.00 for the sale, a $4.00 profit and still an 80% return on your investment. Just make sure you take those numbers into consideration before you price so you don’t end up losing money when you sell your book through distributors and bookstores. If you price your book in this case at only $9.99, you’ll only get $0.99 profit from bookstores and the distributors will take $5.50 leaving you with $4.49, a loss of $0.51 per book.

Remember, you can always drop the price. If your book is $19.99 and the bookstores are getting 40%, while you want customers in the bookstores to buy your books, you can also sell your books independently on your website or at various book festivals or art shows you attend for $15.99 and advertise that it’s a special 20% off just for this book signing or art show. Customers will then think they are getting a deal, and you can still make a profit. Remember, once you set the price on your book, you cannot raise it beyond the price printed on the cover (at least not until you do a second printing), but you can always sell for less.

Another option is to offer special or limited editions or hardcover copies of the book. An author might print 1,000 paperback books to sell at $19.95 each, and then print an extra 50 to sell at $29.95 each. The hardcover copies might cost $3 more to print, but you make an additional $7.00 in profit. People are more likely to buy hardcover copies over the paperback version for gifts, and they will also feel they are getting something special and more likely to last. You can do a small hardcover print run to see if the hard covers sell and then that may help you determine whether you can raise the paperback price if you reprint.

With a little research into book prices you can settle on a price that will benefit you and your readers. Don’t be afraid to ask for the advice of other authors and bookstore managers. The research and time spent determining your book price will be well worth the reward in books sold and profit gained.

Irene Watson is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, where avid readers can find reviews of recently published books as well as read interviews with authors. Her team also provides author publicity and a variety of other services specific to writing and publishing books.

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By: Patrick Schwerdtfeger

source: http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/104738/publishing/the_challenges_with_ebook_publishing.html