Excerpted from Get Published Today www.getpublishedtoday.com NO MORE REJECTIONS Get Published Today An insider's guide to publishing success! Penny C. Sansevieri Excerpted from Get Published Today www.getpublishedtoday.com Table of Contents Publishing Overview: The Business of Publishing . 3 Understanding Self-publishing . 7 Understanding How the Traditional Publishing Model Works. 11 Determining the Best Time to Publish . 16 New Ways to Find a Publisher . 20 Different Ways to Publish. 25 Deciding on Print-on-Demand . 27 Going Digital with eBooks . 44 Becoming a Publisher . 51 What’sanISBN?..........................................54 Understanding Distribution . 55 Your Self-Publishing Checklist . 61 Taking Care of Business . 64 Protect Your Rights: Copyright, Trademark and Patents . 68 SmartBudgeting..........................................77 Writing Right: The Importance of Editing . 80 Branding: The Secret to Selling More Books . 90 Success Stories. 93 Defining Your Goals. 101 Goals and Mission Statement . 104 APlacetoBelong........................................107 Determining Your Book Category . 109 What’s Your Book’s USP?. 111 Book Marketing Analysis: Strengths vs. Weaknesses. 114 Who’s Your Market? . 116 ReaderProfile...........................................120 How to Identify Your Book’s Key Marketing Messages . 122 Associating the Perfect Keywords with your Book! . 123 Competing Title: Market Analysis . 125 Winning the Name Game. 127 A Marketing Timeline . 130 How to Create an Amazing Author Platform . 133 Building Blocks of an Exceptional Author Platform . 135 Craft an Exceptional Elevator Pitch. 137 Creating a Marketing Roadmap . 140 Getting Your Book into Bookstores . 156 Marketing Secrets of a Bookstore . 158 Getting Help to Market Your Book . 163 Can You Tell a Book by Its Cover? . 166 Back Cover Worksheet . 177 Benefits vs. Features . 182 Creating a Marketing Plan. 185 Celebrity Endorsements . 200 Excerpted from Get Published Today www.getpublishedtoday.com Marketing 101 . 205 Seven Secrets of Writing a Book that Sells . 211 GettingReviewed........................................215 How to Get Book Reviews. 218 Crafting the Perfect Book Review Pitch . 225 From Book to Bestseller . 233 Inbound Marketing Rocks! Now what? . 237 How to Become a Powerhouse Blogger in just 15 Minutes! . 240 Book Awards . 246 How Foreign and Translation Rights Can Work for You . 251 The New Rules of Media . 260 Maximizing Media Leads . 265 Beyond the Bookstore. 269 12 Secrets to Selling More Books at Events . 274 Fifty Things Under $50 Bucks to Promote Your Book . 280 A Few Final Words . 286 Why (Some) Authors Fail . 292 Excerpted from Get Published Today www.getpublishedtoday.com Publishing Overview: The Business of Publishing Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. -Don Marquis The truth is this: publishing is a business. It's not about TV appearances, bestseller lists, or Oprah. It starts and ends with the fact that it's business and, as such, a business needs a good product. Your book is that product. Now this might sound a bit cold to you, I mean after all, didn’t you spend hours and days working tirelessly on this book? Crafting chapter outlines, developing characters, maybe even digging into your own personal family history if this is a memoir? Yes, you did all those things, but understand first that in order to create a product that will sell, it must be viable. We'll get more into this and look at what sells and why in just a minute. For now, let's dig deeper into traditional publishing. The Publishers Publishing falls into two broad categories: traditional and independent (also referred to as self- publishing). The term "independent" can also encompass boutique publishers as well as print-on- demand, which we'll get into later. New York and Books Excerpted from Get Published Today www.getpublishedtoday.com When we think of publishing, we tend to default to the big six publishers in New York. There's a good reason for this: 90% of the books you see in bookstores come out of an island, which would be the island of Manhattan. Also referred to as corporate, trade, or traditional publishing, the big six in New York have virtually owned the market on bestsellers, though a few bestsellers recently proved that even an independent title can garner attention. When we speak of “traditional” publishing, we’re talking about publishers who pay for the right to publish your work. What that means is they pay you an advance and with that, they purchase all the rights to your work. This often includes foreign rights, movie rights, paperback rights, etc. What this also means is that you sign over any other “rights,” meaning creative license. In essence, once you sign with a publisher, they (the publisher) decide that your book needs a different ending, or that chapters need to get pulled or reorganized. Well, you get the picture. Sounds scary? Well, depending on who you ask, it can be. So why do most of us prefer this route of publishing? Because publishers absorb all the costs, right? Well, not really. These days, while publishers do pay for production, the cost of marketing is squarely on the authors’ shoulders. That’s right. Aside from national distribution, most publishers don’t offer a lot of support; especially in the way of marketing and publicity. We’ll talk about distribution and why it’s important later. Facts about Trade Publishing Here are some facts that might surprise you: First, a book that sells 10,000 copies is considered a major success. Was this always the case? No. But with the amount of books filling the market, that's a significant number unless you are Stephen King. Trade publishing is driven by hits. On average, 10% of new books generate 90% of their profits. What does this mean to you? Well, publishers go after "star" titles; big names that can carry the list. For example, Dan Brown's follow up to the Da Vinci Code was considered a star title and could carry an entire publishing house. If a publisher has 90% of so-so selling books but 10% of Excerpted from Get Published Today www.getpublishedtoday.com major titles, they are considered a success. To further drill this down, if you are in the 90% of what they consider so-so titles, you might not get the lion's share of attention from their marketing department, if any at all. What do I mean by "so-so" title? This means that they may or may not sell well despite the work that's been done on the book and estimated market. If a book needs work, editors don't have the time to devote to major revisions. What does this mean to you? It means that if you are submitting a book to a publisher, or even a book proposal to an agent, it must be clean. Get it edited, vetted, whatever you need to do to diminish the work that the agent/publisher/editor needs to do to get it to market. You might think your title is original, but for every book idea submitted, a hundred other similar titles are waiting to be approved, so despite the originality of the idea, the competition can still be fierce. Publishers expect authors to participate in (if not run) their own marketing campaigns. Regardless of how you publish, you will be your own marketing department. Do not expect that a publishing house will take the reins of your campaign. Book Facts The average book sells 500 copies 1,500 new books are published daily Big publishers prefer big names (remember that 10% rule) 38% of books are now sold online 40% are sold out outside of bookstores Excerpted from Get Published Today www.getpublishedtoday.com Understanding Self-publishing Publishing is a business. Writing may be art, but publishing, when all is said and done, comes down to dollars. -Nicholas Sparks The future of self-publishing In 2007, it was estimated that over 200,000 titles were self-published. In 2008 that number escalated to 325,000. Now, today, there are approximately 1,500 books published each day in the US and 80% of those titles are self-published. Much of this flood of content has come because of print-on-demand, which is, as the name implies, an on-demand way of printing books that many (many) authors have gravitated to. Though with all those titles, not all of them can be viably competitive, right? To be exact, around 1% of everything that’s self-published is considered to meet “industry editorial standards” – meaning the standards that reviewers impose on titles that will or won’t be considered for review. Bookstore standards fall into this category and well, you get the picture. If your book isn’t meeting these industry standards, it will likely never be able to meet your sales goals either. William Young’s book, The Shack, was originally self-published and then co-published by a major New York company and went on to sell more than seven million copies. The book (and then later the movie and Broadway Show) Legally Blond took an interesting turn after the Excerpted from Get Published Today www.getpublishedtoday.com original manuscript was rejected by several publishers. The author decided to publish it on her own. It was first optioned for a movie, and then the book was republished by a New York House. The point is this: sometimes New York has good reason for rejecting a book. Sometimes it’s not the right season or market, and other times there simply is no market for the book. But then there are those hidden gems that might otherwise get overlooked, and this is, in particular, where self- publishing comes in.