How Should You Publish Your Best Seller? A Case Study
For some of us, being a published author would be the climax of
a career. Having a book that you created sold in bookstores
worldwide is the dream of a lifetime. Imagine being on a best
seller list! The fame! The fortune! The celebrity status! And
how hard can it be, if you are very good at what you do AND are
willing to do whatever it takes to get to the top?
While traditionally this route has been the one that many great
authors have taken, there are several other options now
available that will also lead to your continued (and profitable)
success! TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING
Let's take a look at how you would get published via Traditional
Publishing methods. First of all, you would need to get the
attention of a publisher. Therein lays the first of many
obstacles. You see, every week, publishers are inundated with
thousands upon thousands of manuscripts from talented hopefuls
just like you! Imagine entering your office on Monday and being
greeted with over one thousand packages, all with your name on
them. Obviously, the chances of one manuscript rising to the top
of the pile are slim to none.
But say for a moment that somehow the publisher DOES select your
manuscript. There are a few caveats that you need to be aware of
before you order up the Champaign!
1. Firstly, the publisher controls ALL aspects of the
book-to-be. It is, in practicality, HIS book that YOU are
writing, so you must defer to him regarding the content, the
look etc! 2. You need to be aware of the long window of time
between when you hand in the completed manuscript and when the
final copy of the book is stocked on the shelves for sale. If
the focus of your writing is in any way time-sensitive, your
work may well be out of date before it is even published! 3.
Don't plan on making MILLIONS. The standard fare for most
authors is a measly 8% commission per copy! When a book sells
for $29.99, you get a whopping $2.40-enough to go to Starbucks!
4. Now the good news is that IF a bookstore decides to carry
your book, they will pay for all of the books that they stock.
However, don't cash the cheque just yet! The bad news is that
whatever they DON'T sell in 90 days, they will return and expect
a refund!
SELF-PUBLISHING
Now don't despair! There is more than one way to get a book out
to the hungry masses! Consider the example of Marjan (pronounced
Mar-yahn) Glavac. In 1997, Marjan was teaching in a high school
in London, Ontario, Canada where he was approached by a
publisher to work on a book. For several months, Marjan toiled
until finally he had his first three chapters complete. However,
when he contacted his publisher again, she told him that she
already had two other authors working on exactly the same thing!
Despite the letdown, he decided to press on and finish the
project and see where that would take him. Marjan knew that,
once complete, the book had to be printed, then distributed,
then sold if he were to make any money (assuming, as he did,
there was a market for his book).
One Thousand Hours Later...
It took Mr. Glavac about one thousand hours to complete his
work. This gave him 200 pages of material that his wife
faithfully edited. The next step was to send a perfect sample of
each and every page to the press that was waiting to start the
print run. This was where they ran into trouble: "For some
reason, my printer at home suddenly refused to work properly! I
couldn't believe it! Here we were with a book waiting to be
published and the clock was ticking and my printer was smearing
every page that I printed. I finally had to run across town in
the middle of the night and borrow a laser printer from a friend
of mine!"
Head North, Young Man
By himself, Marjan had found a press that agreed to print his
book. The deal worked in this way: to cover the printing of a
minimum number of books, Marjan would open an 'account' with the
press by depositing a minimum of two thousand dollars with them.
When they had more money, they could deposit it and get more
books printed. The more books they wanted, the more money it
would be.
Imagine their excitement on the day that their first shipment of
books arrived! Three thousand copies shipped and stored in the
Glavac garage! Unfortunately Marjan discovered a huge glob of
ink in the centre of every single book. The entire shipment was
useless and had to be returned!
The Do-It-Yourselfers
To get his books sold, Glavac then contacted local bookstores.
"The first question that they ask you is 'Do you have a
distributor?' Bookstores make no bones about the fact that they
really do not want to deal with self-publishers. It was very
frustrating! I thought that my original contact with a real
publisher would have made some kind of difference-boy, was I
wrong!"
So he set about contacting distributors, which was almost
another road block in itself. "Distributors, like presses, are
not willing to take on any risk themselves. They all want a
minimum of ten thousand copies which, of course, I would have to
print at my expense. Plus, if they go bankrupt, you are in
danger of losing all of those books that you just paid for!"
After some thought, Marjan decided to forego the risks and
simply sell their product out of their garage. This required
spending more money and more time! They needed to purchase
envelopes, postage and labels. Whenever an order came in, it had
to be packed up and mailed out again as quickly as possible.
Against All Odds-A Best Seller!
Despite the obstacles, Glavac printed over 9000 books and sold
7000 of that number between 1998 and 2005. That equates to a
best seller in Canada and also to over $83,000 in gross revenue
for Marjan!
Knowing the risks and labour involved, would Best Selling Author
Marjan Glavac self-publish a book again? "Not likely! I'm still
going to follow my dreams and continue to publish, but I've
found a better way to do it that carries no pressure, no risk,
little labour and ensures that everything I publish always
up-to-date, no matter what!"
E-BOOK AUTHORING
The 'better way' that Marjan is referring to is called eBook
Authoring. Its fans and its benefits are many. For starters,
there is no overhead cost and no inventory of product to keep on
hand. Also, as an electronic file, it can be sent as a Portable
Document Format (PDF) to any editor in mere seconds, making it
easy to shop around. One of its best features, though, is that
copies of it can be bought literally 24/7 without you lifting a
finger! And when some of the material becomes dated, you, the
author, simply update it, re-PDF it and continue selling it: a
true living document!
"I love e-books because they are so practical and easy!"
exclaims Glavac. "My last e-book was over 100 pages but it took
me only 150 hours to complete it including editing, graphics and
setting up a website to sell it! And in the last eight months,
I've made over $6800, some of it while I slept! In fact in my
first 24 hours, I sold 123 copies and earned $2 948.31 USD."
So Easy, and Still Legal! The road to successful e-book
authoring is radically different, and much more practical, than
that of traditional publishing and self-publishing. It all
begins with finding a market. "The first thing that you need to
do is make sure that there is a market out there for what you
want to sell." says Glenn Dietzel, of awakentheauthorwithin.com.
"Send out surveys to peers, business people, anyone connected to
your area of interest and find out exactly what they are looking
for."
Once you know there are people willing to buy what you are
offering, you need to get their email addresses. Usually this is
done by offering a newsletter or a smaller eBook which the
prospects will receive in exchange for their address. Through
this process, you build a list of willing, interested people who
gladly receive your emailed newsletters about their topic of
interest. They will be a great resource to you as you survey
them in search of content or even a suitable title for your
projected e-book.
Once the book is complete, you know that you already have a
large list of potential customers waiting to make a purchase
from your website! Price-wise, you can charge $27 to $97 for
every product you sell with NO costs to cover. And the more you
market the book to your list, the more you will sell!
So do yourself a favor-when you decide that it's finally time to
show the world what YOU have to offer, become an e-book author
and let your market make you a success, even while you sleep!
Glenn Dietzel "What If You Could Instant Access To A New York
Publisher Without An Agent and Without A Formal Book Proposal?"
How? By Following This Simple, Proven System for Authoring
Success... http://www.AwakenTheAuthorWithin.com/author.htm