Lingua Translations

Posts Tagged ‘Published’

There are 4 ways that you can publish a book:

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.

I’ve been involved in publishing for over a decade now as an author, editor, and project manager; however, it wasn’t until just a few years ago that I decided to move into self-publishing. Indeed, my first few projects involved consulting for others and, now, I am involved in my own, personal projects. It has taken a while for me to come back around to my own works, but in the process I learned how to minimize time and expenses in producing a book and getting it to market.

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 —

Publishing is an extremely competitive business. There are three main ways to go about getting your manuscript published; through an agent, directly through a publishing company, or by taking the increasingly popular self-publishing option.

The best way to improve your chances of getting your book published by a traditional publisher is to find an agent who will ‘take you under their wing’ and add you to their list of clients. Publishing companies very rarely read or pay any attention to unsolicited manuscripts (i.e. a manuscript submitted by an author NOT by an agent). Therefore, you are in a much more likely to get your manuscript published if you have an agent.

Unfortunately, getting an agent to agree to take you on as a client is almost as hard as it is to get a publisher to read your work. Agents give your work approximately 20 seconds of time before making a decision to either pursue you or reject you.., and 90-99% get rejected. It is tough!

So getting an agent…

I am a traditionally published author with Simon and Schuster. I’ve been in the business for almost twelve years and have taken most of that time to learn the ins and outs of the business. I’ve made mistakes and learned from them. During my quest to know as much about the industry as possible, I became published. Now that I am at a point in my career where things are taking off, I have become more aware of the prejudices in the industry. You may think I am speaking of the prejudices against self-published authors vs. mainstream authors but I am not. I am speaking of the prejudices that self-published authors have against the mainstream industry in general.

I often wonder what makes someone self-publish a novel. I can understand a technical book, poetry book or a diary but why self-publish a novel? Self-publishing can be the death and is the death of many wannabe novelists. While studying self-publishing, I came to the conclusion that many new writers were bamboozled into thinking that this was the way to go for their books. Yep, they are being tricked. You can’t even blame this type of trickery on sharks such as shady POD presses, vanity or subsidy presses. No I blame this on one group of people…bitter self-published authors. They spread bad advice and untruths like a disease and it’s damaging the careers of new writers.