: Re: I am an unestablished author with a decent book. Should I publish online, or try to find a 'real' publisher? As I understand it, 'breaking into the business' is expensive in terms of time.

It is a business like any other and obviously the more contacts you have and publicity and financial backing the further you will go regardless of self published or not.

Go into a few bookstores and look at the sheer volume of works pumped out every month and then look online, there are just so many thousands of titles being marketed constantly so in the scheme of things your book no matter how good it is will only have its 5 minutes of fame, if that. Even then it very easily may not because you are not special, there are just too many books out there. If you are someone famous or already well read you may do alright or you could be an unknown and get lucky. Overall like in the movie industry, there are millions of out of work actors, thousands of working poor actors and a select few good or bad actors monopolizing the profit in an industry that has many middlemen.

Publisher compensation is different depending on POD or offset printing and then type of distribution. If you set yourself up as your own publisher and go down the route of POD expect no more than 2.00 per title unit. If you go offset expect to buy in bulk and be able to offload those books to stores with big discounts and returns. Once you understand the business side coupled with the volume turn over in industry the rose coloured glasses will soon be replaced by the hard nosed adopted principles of a working publisher.

Recently I had a highly respected publisher offer to publish my book only if I paid for layout and printing, so times are tough. They had closed their books to any new authors because of lack of money and yet they are a well established independent publisher. The owner told me it makes no difference whether you are your own publisher or not regarding getting reviews or sales. Distribution and marketing is the main thing and from my limited but now quite reasonable introduction to the industry, I'd have to agree.

Load Full (0)

: Capitalization of Open form Compound Words in Titles What would be considered proper capitalization of open form compound words in titles? Should the second part of the compound word be capitalized?

@Alves689

Load Full 1 Comments

: The use of "now" in past tense I want to write something like Now that he met his lost daughter, his happiness is now complete. But I'm not sure how to turn that into narrative past

@Alves689

Load Full 1 Comments

: Writing a character that has many names So one of my main characters uses three different names throughout the story. There's his nickname Warlock, his name Andreas, and his shorthand name Dre.

@Alves689

Load Full 5 Comments

: If the novel is good enough to get published, it won't matter how old you are. You'll just be that much cooler. I've been trying to get published since 12, like youâ€”well actually 11â€”and

: Re: I am an unestablished author with a decent book. Should I publish online, or try to find a 'real' publisher? As I understand it, 'breaking into the business' is expensive in terms of time.

More posts by @Alves689

: Capitalization of Open form Compound Words in Titles What would be considered proper capitalization of open form compound words in titles? Should the second part of the compound word be capitalized?

: The use of "now" in past tense I want to write something like Now that he met his lost daughter, his happiness is now complete. But I'm not sure how to turn that into narrative past

: Writing a character that has many names So one of my main characters uses three different names throughout the story. There's his nickname Warlock, his name Andreas, and his shorthand name Dre.

: If the novel is good enough to get published, it won't matter how old you are. You'll just be that much cooler. I've been trying to get published since 12, like youâ€”well actually 11â€”and

Login to post a comment!

0 Comments

Back to top