|
Published:
January 15, 2002

Getting Your Book Published For Dummies

Overview

There’s never been a better time to be an author!

Books like the Harry Potter series create a media phenomenon, with people lining up and camping outside bookstores to purchase newly released titles. Yet book sales overall – not just those of mega-sellers – are on the rise, as more and more people seek knowledge and entertainment through reading. The Library of Congress currently registers about 60,000 new titles for copyright each year. 60,000 books by 60,000 authors. Imagine yourself as one.

Getting Your Book Published For Dummies is your complete guide to realizing whatever gem of an idea you’ve been carrying with you. If you’ve ever thought, “this would make a really good book,” be it the next great American novel or a guide to naming babies, here’s your chance to put pen to paper and find out! Written from both sides of the editor’s desk – by a widely published writer and a HarperCollins veteran publisher – this guide puts in your hand the advice you need to:

  • Pick an idea
  • Approach the publisher
  • Craft proposals and

queries

  • Work with agents, or act as your own
  • Self-publish
  • Negotiate a contract
  • Create the actual book
  • Sell your published book
  • Full of examples, proposals, query letters, and war stories drawn from the authors’ extensive experience, Getting Your Book Published For Dummies shows you how to clear all the hurdles faced by today’s writers – freeing up precious time for you to refine your manuscript. You’ll get the inside scoop on:

    • Titling your book
    • Major publishers, smaller houses, niche publishers, university presses, and spiritual and religious publishers
    • The 12 elements of a successful nonfiction proposal
    • How editors read queries
    • Submitting fiction
    • Publishing outside the box
    • And much more

    Getting Your Book Published For Dummies is the clear, A-Z handbook that makes the entire process plain and practicable. You don’t need to be a celebrity. You don’t need to be some kind of publishing insider. All you need to do is write.

    Read More

    About The Author

    Sarah Parsons Zackheim has worked at William Morrow, Doubleday, and New York Times Books. She is the author or coauthor of three books, including Dress Your House For Success.

    Sample Chapters

    getting your book published for dummies

    CHEAT SHEET

    Getting your book published is an exciting milestone and one that requires preparation. First, you must write a great query letter or proposal to pique interest from literary agents (who can help sell your book) and editors. You have to explore submission strategies; compose a winning title; and consider adding a CD or DVD or something else of value to help attract readers and buyers.

    HAVE THIS BOOK?

    Articles from
    the book

    To get your nonfiction book published, put together a strong proposal. Use the proposal to "sell" your book to potential literary agents, editors, and publishers. Make sure your proposal is as polished as possible by including the following: Cover page: Contains the title, author byline, and contact informati
    Fiction is a general term used to describe an imaginative work of prose, either a novel, short story, or novella. Recently, this definition has been modified to include both nonfiction works that contain imaginative elements, like Midnight in the Garden Of Good and Evil by John Berendt (Random House, 1994) and Dutch by Edmund Morris (Random House, 1999), and novels consisting largely of factual reporting with a patina of fictionalization, such as Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (Knopf, 1997).
    So you know you want to write a book — you just don't know what you want to write about. For many people, it's not uncommon to think that you need to write about something exotic or different or strange — that the familiar just could not be appealing to readers. But the opposite is often true. Writing, after all, is a form of understanding; you write best about things you know best.
    If your book is going to be published (congrats!), offer some added value to amass legions of adoring fans more quickly. Your book's added value can be as simple as the recommendation of someone famous or one of these other attention-getters: Obtain celebrity endorsements Use a foreword written by a well-k
    Getting your book published is an exciting milestone and one that requires preparation. First, you must write a great query letter or proposal to pique interest from literary agents (who can help sell your book) and editors. You have to explore submission strategies; compose a winning title; and consider adding a CD or DVD or something else of value to help attract readers and buyers.
    A literary agent is one of the first people to enlist in your effort to get your book published. Having a good literary agent — one who has contacts with publishers who publish the type of book you write — goes a long way to giving you a chance to say, "Yes, I'm a published author." The following list contain
    You'll get help from your agent or editor with composing a title that will help sell your book, but for your own knowledge (and when it's just you trying to find that agent or editor), use the tips in the following list to come up with a title with oomph: Keep it brief Imply a benefit Crystallize a wish
    One of the most important tasks in getting your book published is to find an editor who's going to get behind your book and help it — and you — make your way in the publishing world. To find an editor who's a good fit, try these tips: Read acknowledgment pages of books similar to yours — authors often acknow
    Getting your work of fiction published is different from getting nonfiction published. A fiction submission (short story or novel) must be a complete manuscript when you submit it to a publisher. Create a query letter, along with plot synopsis, to submit with your manuscript. According to Marjorie Braman, a top fiction editor at HarperCollins, "We very rarely consider novels, especially first novels, unless there is a completed manuscript.
    What's your plan when it's time to submit your manuscript to publishers for consideration? Your submission contains great writing — of course. Getting your book published, however, requires a strategy that includes getting on the phone and perhaps a bit of socializing. These tips can help you map your book su
    The page you are looking for was recently moved. Don't worry, it's still here; it just has a new address: https://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/improve-the-odds-of-getting-your-fiction-story-pub.html
    The core members of any publishing acquisition team are made up of two very different types: The creative, editorial types and the more financially driven sales and marketing types. Generally speaking, the editorial staff is responsible for obtaining a wide range of prospective book ideas and shepherding them through the publication process, while the sales and marketing people are in charge of allocating the publishing house's financial resources.
    One of the steps to getting your book published is to write and send query letters to try to get a literary agent or an editor at a publishing house interested enough in your book to sign you as a client, and, hopefully, offer you a nice advance — a sum of money you can use while you actually write the book.
    https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6630d85d73068bc09c7c436c/69195ee32d5c606051d9f433_4.%20All%20For%20You.mp3

    Frequently Asked Questions

    No items found.