Eleven Stairs To Print Publication
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- December 25th, 2009 |
- Comments
Creating a printed book is a bit more complicated than creating a PDF eBook. More stairs are involved, just by right of producing a concrete finished product that needs to be handled in the physical class (versus an electronic document that can be distributed by e-mail or online). The basic print publishing process for a print-on-demand publishing cycle for a book that will be oversubscribed online finished the print-on-demand marketer’s site (and/or other online booksellers like Amazon) breaks down as follows:
1. Complete your manuscript
2. Develop your cover concept (and do a test of a cover)
3. Format your manuscript for printing (the final product is called a “galley”)
4. Complete your cover artwork (and proof it with attempt runs of a cover)
5. Put your galley and artwork unitedly
6. Create marketing collateral, press releases, etc.
7. Publish!
8. Receive hard copies of your book and send out review copies to press
9. Send out press releases and place advertising and line up interviews
10.Continue the marketing cycle to keep your book in the press
11. Belt your sales and order more books for more publicity
I recommend printing out this list and exploitation it as a project plan for your print publishing. And fill in the blanks in the process, where you know thither are more stairs involved in your own personal experience. Or follow the distribution project plan immediately following this area. Having a checklist to follow can simplify what can be a complicated and sometimes confusing process.
Now, one abstraction you may notice, is that I have listed marketing after the actual publication of your book. I strongly recommend inactivity soil you have a finished, published book in hand, before you start sending out press releases and generating interest. I’ve had international press people contact me inside 24 hours of sending out my press materials, but I had no hard copies in hand to send to them, so that pretty much derailed the opportunity I’d created for myself.
In the conventional publishing class, it’s customary to publicize a printed book at least III months in advance of publication. This gives the press time to review bound galleys and activity your publicity into their own production schedules. Now, for conventional publishers who have full staffs and plenty of money and connections and the machinery for publishing, that’s fine. They can pretty much guarantee that a book will come out exactly the artifact they have it will, exactly when they artifact it will. But when you’re on your own, it’s a different account. Anything could happen along the artifact. You could experience delays with the printer. You could experience personal complications. You could find yourself stalled by artwork that didn’t come out the artifact you craved… any number of things can go wrong, when you’re on your own.
So, it’s prudent to be a bit more conservative about marketing a book you’re employed on. Even if you’re 100% absolutely positively firm convinced that your book will come out in III weeks, anything can happen in that time, that can hold you up or wreck your carefully laid plans. So, don’t make any promises you can’t keep to the press. It will only activity against you.
All this might channel a little daunting, but if you’re reading this, you’re probably an independent identify of person, so the inherent risks and dangers will ail you a lot less than individual who’s never published before and is nervous entering unmapped waters. Certainly, going it alone as an independent print publisher can accept a lot more preparation and organization, than operating alone in digital formats. But it’s also real solid, to have a book in hand that you can give to friends, families, reviewers, and others who have, “So, you’re a writer?”
And if you format your book advantageously, your activity can be indistinguishable from the activity of other writers published by mainstream publishing houses. You can get your own ISBN, your own professional-looking cover, a great looking interior, and all the marketing collateral you could ask for… without disbursal a bantam fortune. All it takes is determination, the right information, any creative inventiveness, a keen eye for detail, and a willingness to keep going, no matter what.
With a little extra care, any advanced planning, and an eye for detail, you can activity your eBooks or achromatic papers or other digital information products into printed books — and not drive yourself crazy in the process.