How To Publish A Book

by Helen Hecker

You may, like many people, have always wanted to have a book published or publish a book yourself. You may want to be the publisher or perhaps find a publisher to publish it for you. But in any case it is important that you learn how to publish a book.

This book could be fiction, in the form of a novel, or could be non-fiction like publishing your memoirs, or publishing your life experience.  Maybe you've had some disability as a result of an accident and want to publish your story. Maybe you are thinking about or want to publish a how-to-do-it book, which would be the most marketable and the best book of all the choices.

There are many reasons people want to write a book and get it published or publish it themselves.

If you plan to write a novel, know that publishing fiction or a novel this will be much more difficult compared to a non-fiction book.

So you have a lifelong dream and sometimes nothing will stop one from publishing the book they have in mind, whether there is a market for it or not.  Sometimes people won’t care if there is a market and end up doing a short run and give books to family members and friends or go to great lengths and expense and end up with thousands.

It's important to remember that if you publish a book yourself that you are going into business for yourself. You will need to know how to publish a book. This means setting up your own publishing company, doing everything it takes to run a business and wearing all the hats. Writing the book, getting it ready for publication, finding out about all the production costs, choosing the way you are going to print it, finding a printing company or deciding on a print-on-demand company, doing all the necessary advance marketing, reviewing all the pre-production work, sending out press releases well in advance, sending out galleys and sending out review copies of your book, timing of everything is very important, knowing exactly what you are going to do before and when your cases of books are delivered, having a book marketing plan that is realistic.

This will all cost money so you will have to figure out how much money you will need.  From the production costs and actual printing cost, the cost to do the ongoing marketing, advertising, publicity and mailing costs and paper cost and all the things you will need to run a business.  You will need to pick the name for your publishing company. Will you need office space or book storage space for your inventory?

Everything will take considerable thought.  For example, the title of the book will be one of the most important things -- it must say exactly what the book is about if it is non-fiction.  You can elaborate a little in your sub-title.  The name of your publishing company should be unique and not be duplicated anywhere or you risk confusion in books listing publishing companies and actually getting book returns from book distributors -- books that belong to other publishing companies. You can check book publisher directories and the Internet.  Try to make your name sound like a small press.  Don’t use the word 'enterprise' in any business name. Try to make the name more general and not related to the title of your book in the event you decide to publish more books and they are not the same genre, topic or category.

There are many books on the market on how to publish a book.  You should read all of them.  Not just one book. Then decide whether you want to go into business for yourself or approach other publishers which is a whole different world.

If you don’t want to publish a book yourself then you have a couple of options.  You can send your queries to publishers outlining your book or you can hire a literary agent to help you do this.

If you hire a literary agent, they will want an upfront fee that will not be returned, even if they don't find a publisher for you. Be very careful if you do this.  I have listened to some horror stories. This can be money down the drain.  And finding the right literary agent may be difficult and some literary agents won’t be interested in publishing your book at any price.  Find a literary agent with clients who are happy.

If you send out your queries to book publishers, try to pick publishers who publish books in your genre, topic or category.  Publishers get thousands of queries every day.  They are not likely to return anything so don’t send valuable work or spend thousands of dollars on you package.

Publishing a book is not easy but thousands have done it and you can too.  Just make sure that you have a book that has a market for it and know that you are starting up a new business and will need money - capital to start and keep it going.  It's not a get rich quick business. You can publish on a shoestring and find low cost print methods and get publicity which is always free except for any mailing costs.  If you are just publishing a family memoir then a few books that you do print-on-demand may be all you need. Knowing how to publish a book will take some work but many have done it.  It's important to be realistic about financing the book, the money it will take to do it, and the investment you will have in a new book publishing business - a self publisher.

copyright©2007 Helen Hecker All rights reserved. No permission is given to copy or reprint this article in any way.