Marketing - to Publishers

1 October 2011, Marketing - to Publishers

Introduction: I realized that I need to introduce this blog a little.  I wrote the novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon.  The working title was Daemon, and this was my 21st novel.  Over the last year, I gave you the entire novel in installments that included commentary on the writing.  In the commentary, in addition to other general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the way I built the scenes.  You can look back through this blog and read the entire novel.

I'm using this novel as an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel published.  I'll keep you informed along the way.  At this moment, I'm showing you the marketing material I put together for a novel.

Today's Blog:  Getting published.  That is the ultimate goal.  The point as a writer is that you want people to read and love your stories.  That's why you became an author in the first place.  The greatest opportunity to get your writing out to all those readers is to have your novel published in print and electronically.  There are basically four ways today to get your work published.

The first is a classical print run publisher.  These are the large publishing houses that make a set publishing run of your books.  They usually pay you a down payment of up to about $1 per book in the publishing run and some amount of royalty per book (usually a percent of return per book, not sales).  Your contract is the overall arbiter of your payment schedule, what you must do for them, and what they will do for you.  The normal publishing runs are 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 and on up.  An unknown author can expect from 5,000 to 10,000 in a publishing run.

So, if you are published by a large publishing house, expect to work hard, for some small guarantee of return.  The book sales business is not what you might imagine.  I'll get to the next three publishing types in time.  I think book sales should be the topic tomorrow.
I'll repeat my published novel websites so you can see more examples:   http://www.ldalford.com/, and the individual novel websites:  http://www.aegyptnovel.com/, http://www.centurionnovel.com/, http://www.thesecondmission.com/, http://www.theendofhonor.com/, http://www.thefoxshonor.com/, and http://www.aseasonofhonor.com/.