Post: #1

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.

Firstly lets start with http://www.blurb.com

Claims to be the 'easiest and best way for anyone on the planet to create and share bookstore-quality books at a very low cost'

Prices start at just $10.95 for one book. Volume discounts apply to orders of seven or more books.

You make the book online with their nifty flash app so no downloads needed. Or you can choose the download software route if you wish.

Has anybody used them before?

Looks pretty good to me.

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

Post: #2

(11-15-2011 10:20 AM)Lumiere Wrote:  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

You know about lulu.com, right? Krauser used it for publishing his book, you can get onto Amazon with lulu for something like £30I believe too, they will also do some publicity - though I guess that a good real life publicist is way way better.
Info on submitting copies of a book to agents easily on-line would be interesting.
I think uncle Roosh used a Flikr competition or something for the jacket of a Dead Bat in Paraguay.

Post: #3

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Post: #4

Great idea to post this thread Lumiere!

From my personal experience, at least, there doesn't seem to be a straight path towards getting published. I'm comparing possibilities, doing some research and in the end I'll probably go for a combination of choices and means, also because my book will be about Brazil and released in English.

I'd be very curious to hear about other people's experiences here. Who knows what kind of tips and insights can emerge from the forum.

What I can share with you guys, so far, is the following:

- It's an uphill struggle to 'cold' approach established agents if you're a beginner. I wrote tens of agents in the US and only a couple bothered to send some discouraging replies. At the same time I managed to hook up some contacts who were impressed by the sample material I sent. I'd say my own (very) scarce connections were ten times more valuable than calling and sending emails with a great story, a differentiated proposal and some solid rationale as to why the book has everything in it to attract plenty of readers.

- Being a non-US resident (and a non-US citizen) I had some serious limitations too. But I found a small US online publisher who for a reasonable fee will do the administration, receive and transfer payments from eventual sales and make the book available for Amazon-Kindle, Barnes&Noble-Nook and the I-store (he can cover, I believe, the UK, US and Germany). This is a package which would be otherwise unmanageable for me.

- Also, I'll self-publish locally and have the book on display in some bookstores.

- Finally, I have also decided to really spread my efforts internationally, beyond the "traditional" boundaries. Depending on what you're writing about, there can be some interesting markets out there. I noticed for instance that India has a rather highly developed publishing industry and enough potential readers who can feel attracted to exotic stories from other countries. I will spend a few weeks contacting some publishers there, as well as in other less-obvious countries.

I'm certainly not answering most of the questions posted here but these are my 2 cents. I'm still doing an "artisan's work" before releasing this first book (two more already in the pipeline).

Post: #5

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

Post: #6

(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.

Post: #7

Ahhhh didn't know that.

In that case, I will need to also.

Post: #8

Article on woman who couldn't get published ,so she self published ebooks....then signed at traditional publisher for $2 million.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entert...62613.html

Post: #9

(11-16-2011 04:13 PM)Pilgrim37 Wrote:  Article on woman who couldn't get published ,so she self published ebooks....then signed at traditional publisher for $2 million.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entert...62613.html

Nice !

Post: #10

Article here with a lots of good advice, links and resources

http://reviews.cnet.com/self-publishing/

Post: #11

How to publish an eBook by the same author

http://reviews.cnet.com/how-to-self-publish-an-e-book

Covers kindle, apple iTunes / iPad eBook store, Barnes and Noble and more

Post: #12

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?

Post: #13

Bumping so I can follow along. Nice thread!!

Post: #14

Urging Authors to be Entrepreneurs: iUniverse CEO Kevin Weiss

Interview from 3 years ago (note - marketplace has obviously evolved since then)

http://www.sramanamitra.com/2008/07/10/o...ss-part-1/

Very interesting especially the comment below the article.

Post: #15

Anyone have experience of buying an ISBN

There are different types of ISBN and different ways of going about buying it, direct from an agency, via an intermediary, every country has its own ISBN authority as so on.

Here is my situation. I am not American I am European. I dont have an american bank account.

I need an ISBN that I can transfer in case I do a deal with a tradition publisher or wont to change publisher for any reason.

The main market for the book will be the US I am guessing and it will be published in eBook and physical book form. I dont want anything that might get in the way of the US market like having a foreign ISBN but I don't know if having a foreign ISBN would be an issue

Would having a non-US ISBN make it more difficult to get it into say, the amazon book store? getting it onto kindle? getting it into the itunes ebook store? barnes and noble e-book store?

Post: #16

Great forum here for POD (print on demand) info

http://www.writers.net/forum/forumdispla...Into-Print

Post: #17

Comparison chart of POD and eBook channels for publishing

http://www.booksandtales.com/pod/

Post: #18

Amazon giving kindle book authors 70% of sales

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/20/amazo...at-play-b/

Post: #19

Lulu vs Smashwords

Who would you say is better for publishing a eBook ?

I notice lulu has reduced their comission from 20% to 10% for the Christmas new year period and until Jan 31st for new books

Post: #20

http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20...the-wallet

Here's a piece about the future of e-book pricing...

Post: #21

(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.

Post: #22

Gentlemen,

Some random lessons I have learnt so far on getting published the traditional route.

I spent most of last year living off my savings and finishing a novel (the sixth I've ever written, but the first that is worth printing). Convinced that something worth reading is something worth publishing, I'm trying to get an agent for my novel.

Since I'm unpublished, I'm not really qualified to give advice, but maybe someone can critique my thinking on the subject.

Lessons thus far in finding an agent:
- Approaching an agent is much like approaching a girl, if your vibe doesn't match what the agent is looking for, you're likely to be brushed off so quickly it's insulting. The value of your work is irrelevant if you're not making an emotional connection with your target.

- Ideally, approach an agent in an agency directly rather than go through the submission process. The only warm response I've received so far is when I bypassed the submission process at an agency and contacted an agent in the agency directly; although I'm still waiting for a final response on my submission.

- If you can choose between email or mailing, choose snail-mail. Agencies get far more email submissions than mail submissions. I imagine that a snail-mail submission is more likely to stand out from the crowd, and get serious consideration. Biggest mistake I've made so far is preferring email to snail-mail, and watching as instant form rejections fling their way back.
I can just imagine the agent skimming my email and going 'nah' and rejecting my work with a single click. I'm guessing my chances of making a connection are better if the agent is holding my work in a tangible physical form in front of him.

- Approaching agents for publishing is a separate skill to writing a novel. You may be a great writer, but it's for nothing if you don't know how to approach in a way that makes you seem like an interesting guy with interesting things to say. Since the only way to get good at approaching is to approach as much as possible, be ready for rejection, and play the numbers game. Approach as many agents as rationally possible, even if it seems like a bit of a long shot, and set a weekly target for how many agents you approach.

- Each agent requires some customisation of approach. Try to google their names and get as much info as you can to customise your query/submission.

- Think hard about your previous submissions, what may have caused them to fail/succeed, and apply your lessons accordingly; for example, if a certain query letter only garnered negative responses, change your query letter somehow or other and see whether that improves the response rate.

Post: #23

I was just looking at Lulu.com and I was getting a contradicting and confusing message from their website, on one page it states it's free to publish books with them and they'll just take a cut of any profits you make then on another they mention prices and how much it will cost per book depending on units ordered.

So anyone used them and can confirm what the deal is?

Post: #24

EDIT, found two cool resources on this, for future reference for others reading this thread:

Roosh's article: http://www.returnofkings.com/691/18-self...shing-tips

Kyle's article: http://www.returnofkings.com/115810/5-th...f+Kings%29

A lot of more current data in those articles and in the comments as well.

Post: #25

bumping this thread.

Things have really changed since 2012 when this thread was mostly written.
If you have any questions, ask away -- I know a lot about self-publishing.
Happy to help.