I Have Finished a Book, What is Next?

So, you say you have written a book and it is ready to be published? Your biggest questions are: (1) What do I do next? (2) Where do I go with my manuscript? (3) Who do I contact to get my book reviewed and evaluated for publishing? (4) How will my book get published and by whom? (5) How much is publishing going to cost me? (6) Can I trust everything I read in publishing catalogs or on the Internet? (7) Who will sell my books? (8) Will my books get put into all of the major bookstore chains? And the list goes on and on. Let’s discuss an initial stage of the book publishing process, how to choose the correct method of publishing.

This column will be ongoing throughout the remainder of this year, and will serve as a guidepost for you, the author, to follow, and stay out of publishing trouble. Not everything you need to know will be offered to you at once. However, let’s begin by laying some clear groundwork for the consideration of getting your work published.

So, what ARE your publishing choices?

Step One - Identify and understand the various methods of publishing.

There are several ways you can publish your book and we will mention them briefly without a long description of what they do or don’t do. The most common ways are:

Traditional royalty publishing – there is usually no cost to you, but there are other important things for you to know like having to find an agent to present your book to a traditional publisher. This could easily cost you time and money with no guarantee that a traditional royalty publisher will publish your book, if accepted, in a timely manner suitable to you. Very few authors get picked up and contracted by a royalty publisher and fewer still get an advancement of money for their book. This is the land of big dreams with about one pot of gold for 50,000 books submitted.

Subsidy self-publishing – this is where you, the author, pay for all of the work to be done on your book, with little or no interaction with those doing the work, and once the book is done you may pay as much as 45% of your first printing run sales to the subsidy publisher. So, you pay for your book to be published and you pay the publisher again when the book is sold. This cost is usually high and communication with the publishing staff is at an all time low. You have little or no say-so even though you are paying the tab. Subsidy presses are also known as vanity presses.

Co-op self-publishing – very similar to subsidy publishing, however, the organization, company or person publishing your book (that is published elsewhere) is actually splitting the costs of publication with you. Various terms are given for royalty splits. We truly don’t know of very many successful co-op ventures. We would not suggest this method of spending your money for publishing your book.

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