1. Commercial Book Publishing

2. Self Publishing

3. Subsidy Publishing

4. Ebook Publishing

1. Commercial Book Publishing – This is the main way that authors have been getting published and can be very challenging. While there are thousands of publishing houses, today there are more writers than ever before.

A publishing house is a business and like all businesses they have a goal to create profits in an efficient manner. It is unlikely that you will be able to make contact with a publishing house if you don’t have a good literary agent.

Surveys show that only 1 out 400 applicants are accepted by literary agents for representation. The majority of literary agents prefer to take on clients that have previously been published.

To get published with a publishing house will take a combination of talent, timing and luck. You can be an very talented writer and have a wonderful book but if the publishing house just finished publishing a book that is similar to yours you may not be accepted – or if this is a “red hot market” then you may be lucky.

For these reasons it is important to do research and see what are the trends and what people are buying. An excellent resource for this type of information is Amazon’s Bestseller section.

2. Self Publishing – Where in the past commercial publishing was the only option, today you can “self-publish” your book. Self publishing is when you take on all of the jobs that are needed to create, print and distribute your book.

Some of the services required are:

*Editing – This is very important for most types of books

*Proof Pages – Preparing the pages and page order

*Artwork – You’ll need both Front and Back covers plus the internal artwork which is any images or clip-art that appears within the text

*Printing – You will need to turn your electronic files into hard/soft cover books. There are 3 options for printing: get a small amount printed, get a large amount printed or use a print-on-demand service

*Distribution – How will you distribute the books? You can contact retailers and online distributors yourself or utilize a professional service

The first step is to decide which tasks you will do and which tasks you will hire someone else to do. Today, thanks to the internet, there is lots of free information available on each step of the publishing process.

3. Subsidy Publishing – This is when the author pays a printer to produce a book and then earns royalties from the sales of the book. Sometimes this is confused with self publishing. With self publishing the author pays all the expenses and in turn receives 100% of the proceeds.

Another name for this is “Vanity Publishing Houses” which sometimes can have bad reputations. They will often claim that they can sell the book and then after paying for everything the writer is left without any real distribution and stuck with a bunch of books.

4. Ebook Publishing – This is a new approach that is gaining a lot of popularity. It is very easy to take a digital file and turn it into and ebook to sell online. A good way to do this is by having a personal website or blog and putting up articles and content to attract visitors and get publicity.

Alternatively, you can order an ISBN online and then companies like Amazon and Mobipocket will sell your ebook through their distribution network and you earn royalties from each sale.

Thanks to the internet there has never been a better time for an author to get published. Some people feel that because there is so much information online that traditional books will become obsolete.

I feel that while this may be true in some categories, for the most part it is the opposite – all of the free information creates a hunger for more!

When radio first arrived, the music industry was scared that they wouldn’t sell as many albums and then they started selling much more than ever before. It’s similar to how in a grocery store you are offered free samples, if it tastes good than you are more likely to buy.

I recommend spending a good amount of time doing research until you discover which is the best way for you to publish your book. I highly recommend utilizing the internet to share with others and grow your readership.

This short article will not try to explain every aspect of book publishing in detail, but it will brush on a few of the important topics. I have a few other book projects in the making that will detail the book self-publishing process; however, in the mean time, this should give you a good basis of understanding.

— The Idea —

The most difficult part of creating your manuscript is deciding on the topic. We all have ideas. It’s part of our being. Ideas pop in and out of our heads all day long; however, we usually dismiss many of them as useless or too simple to be of use. You would be surprised at how many people want “simple” and easy-to-understand information! Readers want books that teach, inform, and entertain.

When you sit down and really think about all you’ve learned throughout your life, you’ll be amazed at how much you really know! Your life experiences alone could fill a library! Even if you feel that you don’t have any knowledge that would be of interest to anyone, you can start small. Research a market that interests you, find your competition, learn all that you can about a specific subject, and then write about it. Your ideas are important, as your knowledge and point-of-view are unique and of interest to others.

— Planning the Product —

I always suggest keeping your book concise and informative. This provides a small footprint, yet it also allows your readers to purchase your book at a reasonable price. Keep it around 100 pages, which, once in book format, equals about 50, two-sided pages.

The core content of the manuscript consists of a title page, copyright, table of contents, figure and table references, acknowledgements, forwards, content, appendices, index, and back page. This list is the basic minimum requirements to support the information necessary to present your book and its content. Of course, you can add other items such as a glossary and a preface, but such inclusions are at your discretion.

It is best to produce your book in the standard 5.5″ by 8.5″ format in both print and PDF. I always suggest PDF to my publishing clients because it is one of the few cross-platform (i.e., Mac, PC, PDA, and UNIX-based machines) document distribution products available today and it is the most popular.

— The Manuscript —

Once you’ve focused on an idea, you’ll have to create an outline or table of contents to define the content. The best way I’ve found to do this is to break the idea down into blocks of contiguous information — similar to assembling a pyramid. Step through your idea and ensure that you are building from, for example, the most general information to the most specific information. Check the outline several times, and have a friend review it, to ensure that gaps are filled in appropriately.

You can actually over-rewrite your work to the point of frustration and burn-out. Ensure that you’ve planned and researched appropriately to provide a solid foundation. In this way you can develop a first draft and then perform substantive and grammar edits. Then, perform a technical edit and a second draft. Once the second draft is complete, move into a final copy edit then, once you produce galleys or a sample version of the finished book, perform a proof read. Don’t rework any of the core steps of document development, but ensure that each step is completed with quality in mind. This ensures a solid product in a short amount of time. If you would like to update or add to the information in your first release, provide a follow-up revision.

— ISBN and Copyright —

Once you’ve started your manuscript, order your group of ISBNs. You can sign up for your ISBNs at http://www.isbn.org for about $240 for 10 ISBNs. However, additional fees can be imposed based on express orders. This is why I say, order the ISBNs while you’re writing the manuscript so that you can afford to wait the 10 days for standard, free, delivery.

You will have to convert your ISBN numbers to EAN barcodes to apply to the back page of your book. The barcode must consist of the ISBN you assigned to the book as well as the coded pricing of the book. You can have a vendor generate the barcodes for between $3 (http://www.toupin.com/serv_writing.asp) and $20 per barcode or you can download and use the Barcode Maker (http://hem.passagen.se/sams/barcode.htm) to generate your own barcodes. For the price, it will pay for itself in just a few ISBNs for your books.

Once you have assigned one of your ISBNs to a book, you can register it in Books In Print (http://www.booksinprint.com/bip/). This is how booksellers are able to access your information and sell your book through their outlets. Additionally, you’ll want to register your manuscript-in-progress with the Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication (http://cip.loc.gov/cip/ecipp14.html). This registers your book for access by libraries and government archives. You will be e-mailed the “CIP data” to be printed on the copyright page following the heading “Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data”.

To protect your work and ideas, copyrighting your book is a simple and inexpensive process. There are actually several different methods of protecting your work including government and commercial organizations. The primary sites are the government copyright office (http://www.copyright.gov/forms/) and WriteSafe (http://www.writesafe.com/).

— Production —

There are many different ways to produce your books; however, costs range from a $1,000 initial setup plus the purchase of a few hundred copies down to no setup fees and pay-as-you-go. The final choice is yours, but my direction involved a local printing company and a pay-as-you-go scheme. With this approach, reduced initial costs are reflected back to the readers and your profit potential is seen immediately.

Three places that I’ve experimented with to print some of my books include Kinko’s (http://www.kinkos.com/), InstantPublisher (http://instantpublisher.com/pricing.htm), and Mimeo (http://www.mimeo.com/). Of course, use these for starters to experiment with your books. Eventually, you’ll find the right bindery for your needs. You can locate many publishers via Google.com or AllTheWeb.com using keywords such as “online printing”, “book printing”, and “print on demand”, but once you get some experience behind you, the choice will be much easier.

— Marketing and Distribution —

Once you assign and register your ISBN for your manuscript, it becomes available to the multitude of book stores around the globe including Amazon, Borders, Barnes&Noble, and various other major book sellers. Now that you have your book out there, the trick is to have people purchase the book and have book stores stock copies on their shelves.

To have the book stores purchase in quantity, you’ll have to devise a solid marketing plan to their acquisitions personnel. In many cases, book stores will simply sell your book to their customers as it is requested, but if you can get them to buy in bulk, that’s greater exposure and sales for you!

You can also license out the content to various professional speakers. Speakers are always looking for ways to provide quality information specific to their presentations. They might use your content in a handout, or perhaps for sale in the back of the room. Locate those speakers that fit within your audience and contact them. Find out their needs for their next presentation and work out a deal for them to resell your books. I’ve had many speakers use my articles in their presentations and the exposure and feedback has been overwhelming.

Of course, you should always locate affiliates to help sell your books. One way is to offer them a percentage of the gross sales or sell them copies of the books at a discount. Either way, you will have “agents” out pushing your books for you to make money for them, as well as for you.

Always provide a web site that boasts the benefits of your book. Use a book cover maker to create a book image on the web site. One quality book cover creator is called CoverFactory (http://www.ans2000.com/a2k_coverfactory.php) and provides numerous capabilities to generate professional looking covers for books, software, and services.

Free content is an important way to bring people to your site and let people know about your book. You can provide rewritten excerpts from your book as articles and submit them to various article announcement lists, press release sites, zines, and directories. I’ve been able to locate and associate with over 1,000 sites and lists that accept and publish my articles. This provides outstanding coverage for my sites, services, and products.

— Sales and Returns —

Since you are the publisher, you now have to determine how to handles sales. It’s important to define how you will handle direct sales and shipping, bulk sales, and affiliates. You want to ensure that your sales go smoothly as well as provide enough of a margin so that everyone profits.

When collecting funds, it’s important to accept credit cards through one of the popular merchant vendors. To minimize expenses and provide a common and secure payment mechanism, I use StormPay (http://www.stormpay.com) and PayPal (http://www.paypal.com). Since people have their likes and dislikes of online payment vendors, using both allows many different types of users to submit payments. Of course, you must always determine how to handle returns as part of a quality customer service program.

— What’s next? —

Obviously, the information provided here is merely an overview of the entire process. However, I am working on a book that provides all of the details of producing your own book under your own imprint. Publishing provides excellent return monetarily as well as through enhanced self-esteem. There is quite a feeling that comes with getting your message out there and having people return positive feedback. Perhaps, once you self-publish a few of your own titles, you can work on publishing other authors and open a full-fledged publishing house. In this day, such a venture is not unheard of!