[basil]

(11-15-2011 10:20 AM)Lumiere Wrote:  

I know that Roosh and myself are not the only people on here with an interest in book writing so lets have a thread about resources.

...

Other resources of interest that maybe you guys can suggest are the following.

Can anyone recommend :

* A great publicist that can get you press interviews, on radio talk show, magazine articles etc.
* How to find a good agent
* A good illustrator to do both a book jacket and the internal illustrations
* How to get a book deal
* Resources on how to market your book to the masses
* A good copy righter to write the marketing blurb

I get the impression your talking about a non-fiction work Lumiere? Care to give some more info so can give more appropriate advice.

* Haven't looked in to a publicist. Tim Ferriss hired one for launch of 4HWW and said it was the biggest waste of money. Almost all publicity he chased himself.

* To find a good agent you ideally want to find one who has already repped and sold books similar to what you are pitching. Most authors in the acknowledgments sections will give props to there agent, armed with that info get googling. Otherwise search at agentquery.com or Media Bistro and then get the dirt on what deals they have done at Publishers’ Marketplace , google them as much as you can, make sure your not wasting your time pitching a business book to someone looking for the next harry potter or twilight book. Then find out exactly how they like to be pitched, most agents are really picky, want you to format a certain way, send certain proposals, some wont accept emailed submissions, some only accept emailed submissions.

* No idea on the illustrations, best designer I've come across so far is Matt Roeser, check out more of his stuff at http://newcover.tumblr.com/

* How to get a book deal? Getting an agent to get you the deal is the safest bet these days. Failing that, get hustling and networking. Get to know the people at publishers who make the decisions and your book could land on top of the pile. Without knowing anything about your book, another option maybe submitting to Amazons Kindle Singles program. Or you could self-pub via Amazon, hustle, get some attention and possibly have publishers or agents approaching you.

Also as per your other post, I dont know much about ISBN's but im 99% sure your kindle isbn is completely different to regular books isbn.


For more I would recomend reading the blog of J.A. Konrath - http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
Or his book The Newbies Guide to Publishing, I've just started and I think you can find majority of the content on his blog.

Also Tim Ferriss has written some great stuff in his archives here, guest post by Tucker Max and in an interview here.

(12-06-2011 03:06 PM)hydrogonian Wrote:  

I'm not an expert, but for those guys that are in the know, maybe you can talk about distribution strategies in the context of profits?

Self distributed vs traditional publishers vs middlemen like amazon and lulu?

I'm no expert, just an aspiring author (and self published with a non-fiction work and two short stories on Amazon for kindle only) who has slowlly been learning about the industry.

The old school traditional publishers model is when you sign up with your book that they want (usually your agent passes it along to someone at the publishers), they give you an 'advance' for a first time author (unless your a celeb) this will be under 20k and as low as 5k. They are getting smaller and smaller. Your agent who sold the book for you will collect 10% on average, tax man will have a good bite as well.
Now that word 'advance' implies that there is more cash to come, sadly this is rarely the case. You have to 'earn out' your advance in sales before you get paid more. So you have to sell a truckload of books before you see any more cash. Lower advances however are making this more of a possibility. Numbers that I have read for how much authors make per book once they have earnt out the advance are in the range of 6-15% of sale price.

Entirely self-published and distributed, from what I have read is financial suicide unless you have thousands of people who have already per-ordered and more lined up after them to buy once its available. There would be a hell of a lot of headaches. Forget the idea of getting your book in any chain bookstores and your are going to have to contact each and every mom and pop independent bookstore separately or find and pay someone to do it (even then they probably wont take a chance on stocking it). Then you have to organise printing, pay to have hundreds to thousands of books shipped to you, then handle the processing of orders. Wheres the shot gun? I want to do a Hemingway just thinking about it. Oh and you pay for everything up-front.

Now self-pubbing through a middleman like amazon on kindle through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP - used to be DTP) and print via CreateSpace (both are owned by Amazon and list your books well for sale there). I haven't looked in to LuLu, Blurb and others. I think you will find CreateSpace beats them though, it seems to be the choice of majority of succsesfull self-pubing authors.
I have not published a print book yet, perhaps Roosh can comment on the economics there.
From what I've looked at it varies greatly depending on how many pages, what dimensions, etc.

But I can tell you what KDP is about. If your book is over $2.99 you earn 70% of every sale (minus small amount for delivery cost - most likelly less than 10 cents). If your book is between the minimum 99 cents and $2.98 you get 35% (but are not charged delivery). There is no upfront costs and no ongoing costs. You would be wise to consider hiring an editor/proof reader ($200+) and pay to have a cover designed ($50+), but you can always DIY.
To get your ebook listed for sale on B&N, Apple iBookstore and a bunch of others Smashwords is the biggest alternative. They will give you 60-85% depending on where the book is sold. Again they do not charge any fees other than the % they take from you.

Hope that helps a bit.

(11-16-2011 08:24 AM)Locksmith Wrote:  

(11-16-2011 05:06 AM)Lumiere Wrote:  

You can publish it yourself on amazon.com in kindle form pretty easily I gather

They'll ask for a US bank account and a US mailing address, that's why I'll have to resort to a middleman who has a homebase in the country.

They dont ask for a US account and adress, however if you dont have one you will loose a chunk of money through US taxes until you taclkle some painfull paperwork.
I'm not earning enough to bother yet, for more info and how to tackle it read this.