One of the first questions I am always asked by a new client when we have our first meeting to discuss their book is whether they should look to secure a deal from a traditional publisher to publish and market their book or whether they should self publish.
I have worked with clients on projects that have involved both options. So I am familiar with and have a high level of expertise on both.
Each option has, as you might guess, its pros and cons. Which I will outline for you in a future blog.
A quick explanation first of each of them this and next week though, incase you’re not 100% familiar with the terminologies.
Traditional publishing involves submitting either the synopsis of your manuscript, some sample chapters or, in some cases, the entire manuscript to a publisher in order to ascertain if they would be interested in working with you on that project.
Nine times out of ten you then won’t hear back from them for at least six months. That’s if you ever hear back from them at all. Publishers are inundated with ideas, proposals and manuscripts on a daily basis so it is next to impossible for them to respond in the sort of manner you might expect.
So be prepared to wait.
If, and it’s a big if, they say “Yes, we’d like to publish this piece of work”, then it’s very much game on. A contract will shortly follow which, amongst other things, will state what the author (you) is being paid in terms of royalties on sales.
I don’t get another penny at this stage. You’ve paid me to write the book on your behalf as your ‘ghost’. So all sales royalties go to you. Which means if the book sells 250,000 copies, then you’re laughing, laughing, if you like, from the Caribbean island you’ve flown off to on the advance alone.
Congratulations.
But, of course, it hardly ever works out that way.
Which is probably what more than one person told JK Rowling once upon a time.
“Schoolboy and girl wizards learning their craft in a Scottish castle Jo with elves, magic broomsticks and ghosts? Come on Jo, no-one is going to be interested in that”.
And a lot of publishers weren’t. That is, until someone at Bloomsbury read Ms Rowling’s manuscript, written, longhand, in a café and thought, “I think we might be onto something here”.
It is highly, highly improbable that you are going to have the same experience with your book.
But not impossible.
Besides, even if, given it being accepted as a title for a publisher, you still stand a more than respectable chance of making a fairly decent amount of money out of it as well as, more importantly, have a book on your CV which, naturally, can help greatly when it comes to writing a second, a third and fourth.
Because you’ve done, to pinch the parlance of the world of the London taxi, ‘the knowledge’.
You’ve written your first book.
So you do, at least, have rough idea of what you are doing. And publishers will take notice of that. They’d much prefer to work to someone who has a little, however modest, previous success and experience, rather than someone who has, as yet, had nothing published at all.
And that makes sense. Who would you rather cross the Atlantic Ocean with, a pilot who has already done so a hundred times or someone for whom this is his or her ‘first go’?
So yes, we will, when we are talking about your book, definitely be discussing looking into getting it published in the time honoured and traditional manner, challenging as it might be.
And I will, as part of the service I provide, do that on your behalf.
When you work with me, I am there with you for much more than just the actual writing of the book. I will, in other words, go from being your ghost, to being your agent.
And you never know. We may just find someone who wants to take your project on.
I have and on numerous occasions.
So why not you?
But, if it doesn’t quite work out as well as you might have wanted, then there is another path we can tread together.
Self publishing. Which is rapidly becoming one of the most exciting and progressive aspects of the whole industry.
And I’ll be talking about that next week.
