Publishing an e-book for first time authors

I would like to offer the benefit of my experience with publishers since January this year. I'd like to offer a backstory to why I decided to try finding a publisher.

Someone I know, who shall remain nameless, has the ambition of having a book published on a bookstore shelf. In a conversation with a friend on MySpace, I found a publisher's ad. I won't mention names, so don't ask, but for the sake of curiosity and to possibly refer the publisher to the person I know, I clicked on the ad and decided to investigate. The site was beautifully designed and had a lot to offer an author. They mentioned having among the highest royalties in the industry. I asked a few questions and got a reasonably prompt answer.

So, for the fun of it, I submitted a short story I wrote in October 2009 I'd intended as a new comic book script, so the descriptions were a bit vague. It took them from January until my birthday to answer. Yes, publishers are that slow. It was three months. An author must have infinite patience. I'd actually forgotten that I'd submitted the story to them until I discovered their acceptance message. There was a catch, though: a nearly $4,000 catch. In this economy, that amount is very elusive. They turned out to be a subsidy publisher and a POD - Print On Demand - house. That's fine, if you have that amount of money to simply blow on a story you've written. Sadly, I don't. After trying various ways to come up with the money, I was forced to give up... but not completely. See, this publisher had put a bee in my bonnet. I was actually failing miserably as a comic book artist. My drawing style needs a lot of work to be even close to professional levels. That's improving, but it appears it's not as good as my writing.

I decided to take this little short story around a little. Most publishers definitely require some research. I also found myself learning about the Better Business Bureau and that their ratings are something to be believed. An A+ rating is worth further research, though. An F means run for the hills! I've found that looking for complaints and potential lawsuits is a good way of finding the publishers that won't honestly publish a book, but will instead run away with your rights. Even if you like the publisher and they send you the contract, look for an audit clause - that's an author's best friend, I've been told. It means an author can audit - much like the IRS - and find out if the publisher's lying about how many books have been sold. An honest publisher will have this as they have nothing to hide from their authors.

Now, for the rest of what I've learned: 15% of manuscripts are accepted in a year's time, of that 5% are new authors. I don't know where I saw that, but it's true. In either case, 3% are books that make it to the shelf. Print publishers have gotten really tough since printing costs have gone up a great deal. This is where ebook publishers come in. They don't have the printing costs to worry about.

An e-book publisher is considerably more friendly to new authors. They're willing to take a few more risks and only have to worry about making a download available. I've found far more bad publishers and subsidy publishers than honest ones. E-book publishers probably have their bad eggs too, but for the most part, they have no need to be bad. Believe it or not, it appears e-books are the wave of the future. There's a good many devices that can view e-books. From PDA's to cell phones and even computers.

I'm not saying get your hopes up about instantly finding an e-book publisher, far from it. Though there are lists online that show a good many e-book publishers, you have to sift through these lists to find one that might be willing to publish your book. Many have word count limits and only publish specific genres. I spent hours going through these lists, sometimes a week at a time due to other things I had to do. I had to spend hours to research any possible problems the publishers might have as well. Most take 2-3 months to respond. It's a rare publisher that takes less time than that.

To any publisher, formatting is important. Their guidelines should be your first clue about their accept and reject policies. I'd written my story using an MS Word template, and found that some publishers just don't like it because of that. E-book publishers, the few I had to deal with before getting lucky, seem to be less fussy. Not any less strict, but not quite as stubborn as the classic publishers. The classic publishers are set in their ways and not likely to change. You send a PDF file to an e-book publisher, you might have a better chance of them liking it. No guarantees, naturally, but good formatting and editing increase your odds to start with.

Consider this article a bit of encouragement and guidance. Just like everything in life, it takes hard work and dedication to get into. The vast majority of my hard work was an A in my English 101 college class. My instructor did just as much hard work to help me earn that grade and it's clear to me that it was well earned.

Another piece of advice: there are a great many law firms that will offer guidance concerning contracts and some do free consultations. It helps to have them explain the terms of a contract a little more clearly. Not everyone speaks legalese, I know, so having them translate it is useful. Even asking them a few questions about the contract will help tell you if you've found a good publisher or a bad one.

On the other side of the coin, it's tough selecting, publishing and marketing a book by a new author. There's only about a million risks and a ton of "what if's?" They get hundreds, sometimes thousands of manuscript submissions a day and from that, they have to weed out the authors who are the starry-eyed unwilling-to-work types and pick out the ones who are very serious about their work. It helps to communicate goals to them and again, I don't know where I read it, but keep constant communication with them! Make sure they know you're interested and strongly motivated to work with them. Don't, don't DON'T just be accepted and expect them to do all the work! Expect to work hard and help with marketing. Being on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter tend to be a bonus. Having your own site can be useful.

Here's a few of my keys to success:

1. website featuring sketches of my characters with profiles offering more details about their personalities. Now, okay, not everyone could easily draw sketches of their characters, but everyone could with some practice. Writing and drawing have that in common: they both require time and practice. It's exactly why I have taken to writing these articles. They're excellent practice, much like drawing thumbnails in a sketchbook.
   
2. Making it clear to the publisher I have every intention of marketing the book regardless of whether they're going to market it or not - not every publisher will do the marketing for you. They love communication and for an author to be open with them. They don't know who you are, so if you can keep up a conversation with them, it helps.
   
3. I'm on 10 different social networks of differing types, plus I have my own blog. Through these, I reach a good many people I know and some I've never met face-to-face.
   
4. Word-of-mouth advertising is the very best. Asking friends and family to talk about your work is great, having them buy it and show it off is better, but not everyone can do that. Offer them the options of buying and talking.
   
5. My favorite method is to setup a business card I can print myself in something like Word, which is a pretty common program and ask friends and family if they'll print the card too and hand them out in the course of conversation. This is where a site is very effective because having a link on the card and people talking about it means people might be more likely to explore the site. Having the card in a common file format to send to friends and family is a good thing. I've already asked friends to print and begin handing mine out.
   
6. As far as logo is concerned, simple is best. It's more memorable when it's simple. For ideas, just look at packaging for things you buy at any store. Usually, you find a simple logo. I'm not much of a graphic artist, I can readily admit to that, but it appears that simple is a good way to go. My logo is a simple silhouette of my main character. I've watched people react to it and they immediately notice the silhouette against the pale blue of the background. Contrast is important, too. A black silhouette against a pale blue background with black lettering has been very effective for me. It also doesn't kill printer ink as fast as a super colorful image. Cheap and simple tend to be the most effective.

None of this in any way is an absolute guarantee a publisher will accept, but it offers some insight that might help. I recall a saying in my first high school math class "Shoot for the stars, you might miss and hit the moon, but you're that much closer." Another pet saying of mine is "Be patient and strong until you establish justice." Sailor Uranus said that. Both are quite true.