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    Publish Smart: How to Harness the Power of New Technology to Grow Your Creative Empire Right: The Creative Entrepreneur
    Publish Smart: How to Harness the Power of New Technology to Grow Your Creative Empire Right: The Creative Entrepreneur
    Publish Smart: How to Harness the Power of New Technology to Grow Your Creative Empire Right: The Creative Entrepreneur
    Ebook137 pages1 hour

    Publish Smart: How to Harness the Power of New Technology to Grow Your Creative Empire Right: The Creative Entrepreneur

    By Beth Ann Erickson

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    About this ebook

    Thanks to technology, getting your work published is easier than ever... or is it?

    Writing and publishing a book is one of the most powerful marketing strategies any creative entrepreneur can undertake. Although the Internet has created new publishing opportunities galore, it's also created a new breed of publisher that may (or may not) make it easier to make a living (or have a profitable hobby) as a creative entrepreneur.

    This handbook explores various options to get your work published. You'll also discover tips to give you the edge when you evaluate publishing opportunities, how to easily spot scams, little known (but profitable) markets that will augment your income, and much more.

    Armed with a little industry savvy, creative entrepreneurs can not only make a good living, they can save hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars by avoiding scams, hooks, lines, and sinkers lurking in the current publishing environment.

    Beth Ann Erickson is the Queen Bee of Filbert Publishing, editor of Writing Etc., the zine for creative entrepreneurs, author of a dozen titles, copywriter, and marketer. You can keep up with her antics at FilbertPublishing.com

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFilbert Publishing
    Release dateAug 15, 2016
    ISBN9781536587524
    Publish Smart: How to Harness the Power of New Technology to Grow Your Creative Empire Right: The Creative Entrepreneur

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      Book preview

      Publish Smart - Beth Ann Erickson

      Publish Smart

      How to Harness the Power of New Technology to Grow Your Creative Empire

      The Creative Entrepreneur Series

      Beth Ann Erickson

      ––––––––

      Copyright 2003/2016

      All Rights Reserved

      Published by Filbert Publishing, 140 3rd Street, Box 326, Kandiyohi, MN 56251. USA. ©2003 Beth Ann Erickson. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

      Manufactured in the United States of America.

      Filbert Publishing

      Introduction

      There’s only one reason to become a writer. One reason and one reason only. We’ll talk about why you write later. First, we have a few technicalities to discuss....

      I became a freelance writer with a dream in my heart and rose-colored glasses firmly in place. With dreams of wildly creative mornings and lazy afternoons, I began sending out queries to the lucrative magazine markets while slaving over my Great American Novel.

      And so I worked. And worked. And worked.

      My first year of freelancing netted a whopping $1,000 (give or take) and more rejection letters than I could count.

      To make matters worse, not one person I contacted asked to review my first novel.

      To call that period of my life frustrating would be an understatement.

      But I didn’t give up. I decided to research my craft and learn everything I could about the business of publishing. I discovered that with just a little change in my focus, I could work smarter, not harder. Doing this increased my acceptance rate to around 90 percent.

      This book contains much of what I learned these past few years... information that’ll make your transition from someone who writes to published author.

      Best of luck always, and keep in touch. You can always contact me at FilbertPublishing.com.

      ~~ Beth

      Inside This Book

      Step One: Choose Your Options Carefully

      Step Two: Educate Yourself... Get Really Good at Persuasion

      Step Three: Contacting Publishers/Markets and Mastering the Craft

      Ten Steps to Freelancing Freedom

      Beyond the Writer's Market: Lucrative Assignments in any Economy

      How to Write, Publish, and Sell Profitable Books – a Self Publishing Primer

      Sample Zine

      Sample Publishing Agreement

      Conclusion

      Step One: Choose Your Options Carefully

      Let’s begin by talking about book publishers. Don’t worry, if you’re into the magazine market, we’ll get there in a minute. Much of what we’re about to discuss applies to both short and long manuscripts.

      Because this section isn’t intended to be an exhaustive study of various types of publishers, my intent here is to give you a general overview of the industry so you’ll know how to target your efforts and increase your chances for success.

      The Big Wigs

      I’ll bet you didn’t know that there are only around five major book publishers world-wide. Yup. Just five.

      Now, these major companies have a gazillion subsidiaries, enough to create a pretty big dent in the annual Writer’s Market.

      What does this mean to you?

      It means that unless you’ve got a pretty big portfolio, unless you’ve got a great deal of success under your belt, unless you’re a fairly big name, your chances of cracking into this market is pretty small. Not impossible... just small.

      Big publishers tend to eye profitability and marketability as major contributors determining whether they’ll accept a book for publication.

      Big publishing houses receive thousands of unsolicited manuscripts and queries each week. Unless you have an inside contact in the house, the chances your query/manuscript will receive any attention whatsoever is slim.

      If a big publisher accepts your manuscript, you can expect a small advance and can earn between a 6% to 10% royalty based on the net receipts. For example, if your $20 book wholesales for $10, you’d receive between .60 and $1.00 per book sold based on this type of arrangement.

      Beware... some writers have complained that their books never earned back their advance on royalties and were asked to return some of their advance. Other writers never earned anything beyond their advance. Be aware of this situation and carefully read any contract before you sign it.

      But I digress....

      If you aren’t a celebrity, don’t expect much promotional effort put into your book. Publishers tend to follow the 80/20 rule... 80 percent of their promo dollars go into the top 20 percent of their books. The remaining 20 percent of their promo dollars go into 80 percent of their titles.

      Also, you can expect that your book will be available for between 6 months and one year. After that it’ll be remaindered into discount bins.

      If you’ve signed your rights away, this may spell the end of your book. Sometimes the rights to your book may revert to you after the contract ends, sometimes they don’t.

      Read your contract carefully if you ever hope to own your manuscript again.

      Medium and Small Publishers

      Medium and small publishers generally serve a niche and often have a built-in audience for that market.

      For example, Filbert Publishing specializes in publishing books for creative entrepreneurs: freelance writers, small business owners, musicians, poets, etc. Using Writing Etc. (our free e-mag for our target audience) as a big part of our promo plan, we’re able to effectively sell these types of titles to our readers. We also publish some fiction... after all, writers tend to be voracious readers.

      However, give us a book about fishing, and we’d be sunk (no pun intended). We like to stick to our specialty and our authors know this.

      Don’t expect much of an advance from a small and medium publisher. Many don’t give advances at all.

      With a strong, targeted book proposal, you’re almost assured to receive an educated read from the people at many of these houses. This is assuming, of course, that you’ve researched the publishing house and have sent them appropriate material.

      For example, although Filbert Publishing publishes books for creative entrepreneurs, I’d venture to guess that one query out of 200 is targeted to our readership. We’ve received books on every subject under the sun... with the rare queries pitching a book for the audience we'd like to serve.

      If other publishing houses mirror mine (and I hear they do) consider the success you can have when all your queries are tightly targeted.

      Which leads me to my next point: read any contract you may be offered carefully. Find out if your royalty schedule is based on the retail price of the book (this is best) or net receipts (not as good), or net profits (you don’t want this). More about this in the Red Flag section of this book.

      Your book will enjoy a longer life at a medium to small publisher, many times your book will live on as long as you’d like it to.

      You won’t pay fees of any kind at a legitimate publishing house. If they begin asking for money for any reason, politely pull out of the negotiations.

      When you contact a small or medium sized publisher, do your homework. Order a couple of their books and see what they look like. Are they full of errors? What do the covers look like? Will they produce something you can be proud of?

      Thoroughly research their current title list, their submission guidelines, and read through their contract. If they appear to be someone you’d like to work with, contact them.

      Subsidy, Vanity, and Predatory Publishing

      Not many publishing houses will fess up to being a subsidy or vanity house. A ton of new terms have popped up in an attempt to remove the stigma of subsidy/vanity publisher on their label.

      You can easily spot one of these publishers by asking yourself one question:

      * Does this company charge me money to get published?

      * Does this company demand that I purchase a set number of books or they won’t publish my manuscript?

      If the answer’s Yes to either of these questions, then they’re more than likely a subsidy publisher and you’d do best to avoid them.

      To get legitimately published, you shouldn’t have to provide the publishing company with any money. Period. Ever.

      A legit house will lay out, edit, design, and help you promote the book, everything... for free... because they believe your book will sell enough copies to recoup their investment.

      After all, if your publisher doesn’t believe your book will sell, why would you allow them to publish it?

      You need a publisher who believes in your project lock, stock, and barrel... and is willing to invest the time and money in promoting it correctly.

      Bottom line: Unless you plan on self publishing your work, never pay even one red cent to get your work published.

      Subsidy and vanity publishers don’t have a good reputation in the book selling business. If your book holds their label, you’ll have a very difficult time selling it to anyone beyond your local community.

      But, things could be worse. If you tangle with a predatory publishing company, chances are slim to none that you’ll find your project turning a profit. Here’s an example:

      I once witnessed a company with a very good reputation adopt predatory publishing methods. It began innocently enough when they launched a self publishing mentoring program costing close to ten grand. During this period, the mentorees wrote their book, paid for editing, purchased great covers, created marketing plans... they did everything a

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