If you want to publish a book, say a book about a towing company San Jose, you have to make an important decision after the manuscript has been completed: How do I publish my book? Do I offer it to an agency or a publisher? Or should I bring it out myself?
How Should You Publish Your Book?
If you want to find a publisher for your book and want to take advantage of all opportunities, you should first submit your book to the agencies. Because agencies don’t take a manuscript that has already been rejected by a number of publishers. But the opposite way is possible. Even if many agencies have rejected the book, you can still try directly with the publishers. So in the first step, write to the agencies. If nobody is interested in your book, try the publishers directly in the second step.
If in the end neither an agency nor a publisher refuses to publish your book, then you can publish yourself.
Agencies
An agency examines a manuscript for its market opportunities. If the verdict is positive, the author will be contacted. The agency will then try to find a publisher to publish the book. Agents have a list of good contacts. Therefore, your book’s chance of getting published has a better chance. You know many of the editors personally, of course also their wishes and the publishing program. In this way, you can offer a manuscript to interested publishers.
Serious agencies only ask about the money after a contract had been signed for a book with a publisher. The agents usually get a success fee of between 15 and 20% – that is, they get this share of all income that the publisher pays for the book.
Most agencies specialize in certain genres. They only want to be offered manuscripts that correspond to these genres. Therefore, you should find out in good time which genres and subgenres the agencies are into and whether your own manuscript fits them. Before writing to an agency, you should check their website to see if an agency is interested in the genre that you would like to offer it.
Publishers
If none of the agencies contacted is interested, then the next step is to contact the publishers directly. Before writing to one of the publishers, you should check whether your own manuscript fits into the book program of the respective publisher. For publishers, too, most of them specialize in certain genres and subgenres. Your own book only has a chance if it fits the genres that the publisher publishes.
If you apply directly to a publisher with a book project, you need patience. It often takes several months to get an answer. Not infrequently, the rejection consists of a standard letter without a reason. But rejection is not a quality judgment, because there are many reasons to reject a manuscript. The publisher does not want to publish the book because it does not fit into the program, there is already one with a similar topic at this publisher, the budget is exhausted and much more. So you shouldn’t be put off by rejections and keep trying.
If your book had been rejected by a number of large publishers, then it is worth looking out for small publishers. They are often specialized in certain sub-genres, a certain topic, a region, or a certain target group. Going for a small publisher that fits your book offers better chances than with a large publisher.
Incidentally, you can have bad experiences with small and large publishers – and good ones too, of course. Bad or unkind treatment of authors does not depend on the size of the publisher but on its corporate culture.
Self Publishing
If you can’t find an agency or a publisher for your book, then you can still publish your book by yourself. To do this, look for a suitable service provider. Publishing on your own is now called self-publishing and is widely accepted in the book market.
Books by self-publishers have to be able to keep up with publisher books in terms of quality: You should recognize at first glance which genre or subgenre the book belongs to. This requires a corresponding title and a professional cover. Both should exactly match the genre or subgenre of the book. In addition, the manuscript must be of very good quality, with perfect spelling and, if possible, proofread by a professional. Then the chances are not bad about selling a few copies.
Self-publishers also have to market their books themselves – and that means a lot of additional work. Anyone who seriously thinks about self-publishing should find comprehensive information on sites that offer services in self-publishing.