Two Roads Diverged: Understanding Traditional and Self-Publishing Differences
Posted by | Posted in Marketing and Advertising | Posted on 28-02-2010
The non-fiction form has undergone a transformation in the past decade. Many more books today are published that blur the line between fiction and non-fiction. And in other cases, the standards for literary excellence in non-fiction writing have risen; no longer is non-fiction thought primarily as a way to transfer knowledge gleaned from research or insight or interview. Non-fiction today describes a robust category of high quality writing on a diverse set of subjects that is meant to be both informative and entertaining.
The traditional publishing path of the past has been described similarly by many sources. Write a book, send query letter and/or book proposal to agents, get picked up by an agent, get sold by agent to a small-to-medium-size publisher, pray that your book takes off and garners attention from a big publisher who pays you a six-figure advance in return for the rights to your book.
Nathan Bransford, a literary agent with Curtis Brown, discusses going from small presses to big publishers. I agree with many of his points on the difficulties of being recognized by a big publisher. His advice is very similar to my premise, if your book is really good, well edited, designed, printed, distributed, and promoted, it will succeed.
One method used by cookbook writers is to have the recipes tested by people with the level of expertise to which they are writing. This helps them to identify where changes need to be made for clarity or conciseness.
Photographs are a huge component of cookbooks. Not only to do they help the reader to visualize how a recipe is supposed to look when complete, they are inspiring and often beautiful to look at when done well.
In my seminars and workshops, I tell authors to treat their book like a business. If you want a real chance, you must treat your book like a big publisher would. When naysayers point to the statistics that say self-published books average less than 200 units sold, I can rebut with a missing link in the formula and Poytner’s list. Remember, if your book is really good, well edited, designed, printed, distributed, and promoted, it will succeed, regardless of the road taken in the yellow wood of publishing.
Want to find out more about self publishing, then visit Todd Rutherford’s site on how to choose the best book proposal template for your needs.
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