Publishing Your Book - Which way to go?

For new and upcoming authors the whole concept of getting their work published can be a nightmare, given there a number of choices when it come to choosing how to publish your work it can often be hard to choose which is best for the individual author.

Publishing House - The traditional method of using a printed book publishing house means that once your manuscript has been accepted (not always an easy task to fulfil) you will have some very important tools to hand. You will have the benefit of an experienced Editor, Cover Artist and Marketer, all things that can make or break your books success. You will need to sign a contract and would most likely receive royalties in the region of 6% of the cover price selected by your publisher, paid to you quarterly in arrears. New authors rarely receive the pre-published lump sum payment that established authors are offered, mainly because when these payment are made it is often against royalties and if the books royalty return does not match the payment received the author can on occasion find themselves working in debt as it were and with no profile history it makes the whole situation easier for all concerned if the initial payment is not made.

There are now a number of digital publishing houses alongside the traditional ones (some of whom offer digital issues for their more established authors) who offer all the same benefits of the traditional publisher such as editorial and art works. The main difference is in the level of royalty received which is much higher for digital processing due to the reduced costs at around 40% of the cover price. Though a close second for many authors is not actually being able to hold and thumb through the pages of the finished work.

All publishing houses require that the work submitted is new and previously unpublished, this means not only in print form but also in digital. Work that has been uploaded to the Internet prior to the books relase is considered to be published and therefore unacceptable.

Self Publishing - Sometimes referred to as vanity press or print on demand is an option available to all authors and varies in cost. A number of Internet sites exist that allow for the uploading and advertising of your work for free (you only pay when a book is actually produced), you have the ability to choose your cover price (allowing for the cost the site will make) copies can be printed on demand and forwarded directly to the purchaser and the profit paid to the author. Other companies will provide the same finished item but require you to make block orders which can be expensive. Self publishing in this way does mean that as well as the writing of the book an author needs to edit it, supply cover art and market the finished product in order to gain sales.

Whilst self publishing may on occassion be thought of as vanity press, if your book is successful you will have started to build a profile/portfolio as a writer which you can in the future be presented to a publishing house.

Having chosen the self publishing route you will need to be clever about your marketing route, remember that ultimately this is a business of sorts and need to make a return for each investment. The marketing needs to be successful in returning a good sales ratio to the advertising costs. As an author there is no reason you can't in fact you probably should give yourself a branding as with any new product coming onto the market, consider a certain amount of consistency and promote at every given opportunity.

Blogs/Social Networks - Many authors use blogs as way of marketing themselves, it does gain you extra exposure and allows for people to constantly follow your progress, though remember if you want ot establish a good following who stay with you you need to be honest with your audience.  With many networks available across the many search engines people are finding that sites such as facebook and twitter can gain them an audience of thousands,  and by crosslinking your work you can gain even further exposure.

Local Radio - Can offer a way of promoting yourself locally, it can be fairly costly unless you can find yourself an affiliation. If your book is nonfiction you maybe able to find a local connection and by promoting the two things at once the process can be both cheaper and more readily accepted.

Book Trailers - The world over knows just how helpful You Tube can be in self promotion, with a home PC (which presumably you used to write the book) anyone can create a book trailer and upload it to such a site. Using the movie maker programme which comes as part of a standard windows package can make a slide slow, add music and overlay words and send the finished item to DVD, or a computer file. Book trailers should not be underestimated a simple google search will bring a results list of 10,500,00. They are used by publishing houses such as Penguin and even have awards.

Google Alerts - By setting up a google alert you will be able to monitor your books searches, each time somebody enters the search term you have set as an alert you will receive an email and link enabling you to see the details. It will also show you not only people searching for your book but people promoting it.

Groups - Yahoo, MSN and Google all offer groups, if your book is on a niche subject you may consider starting one of these groups and or joining one of the existing ones.  For fiction there are many groups already started that allow for you to add links to your blog or the site of your book promoter.