: Re: Do most novels not get published? If a person writes a novel, grammar alright, decent story, word count, etc. everything okay, Is it a crap shoot for that person to get published? Is it

@Deb2945533

Vote Up Vote Down

The truth is that most novels never will be published by another party. There are a limited number of publishers in the world and only a very few books will be selected to be published.

As an alternative in the last few years self-publishing - particularly in e-books - has become a viable and cost-effective measure for new writers to ge their works out to as wide an audience as possible. There are many sites in the world that will allow you to upload your own novel and release it as an e-book for free, then pay you a portion of every sale.

Sites such as Amazon.com and Smashwords.com will both do this for free.

If you just have to see your book in a printed and visual form, look up Do-it-yourself book binding and bind your own copies of your books. It is labor intensive, but you can make a paperback form of your novel for just a few dollars and sell them yourself, but your audience is much smaller.

As an example, I bound my own novel Future Useless and made 75 paperback copies. Each copy cost me about .50 to print and bind, and took many hours from start to finish. I sold most of them for .00 each and gave away about 25. Still, I managed to clear a good profit from the books and it helped pay some bills.

Online I published both at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com. So far I've managed to sell over 150 copies of the novel and didn't have to pay a dime to do so. It took me less than five hours to prepare the manuscript to their approved formats. Much more profitable.

More importantly, After trying for 5 years to get published, my book is being read, and I'm receiving valuable feedback on my writing.

There is a stigma to self-publishing that carries over from older times and regards the quality of the books, but in the last few years, the digital revolution and the sale of more affordable e-reader devices have started to change that perception. Now a self-published novel is not just due to poor quality, but can be seen as the author's choice of marketing instead.

(0)

Login to post a comment!