GETTING YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED

This month I’m excited to announce the launch of our new book, entitled How to Start a Creative Business: The jargon-free guide for creative entrepreneurs,by Doug Richard. In honour of this occasion, I thought i tmight be worth talking with our publisher, F&W Media,about how you, too, can get your creative book ideas published,and what publishers look for. F&W Media believes that the best books are written by leaders in a specific field, have a really narrow focus and a clear USP. They’re always looking for wonderful new creative ideas, as long as they have strong market and good commercial appeal. Here are F&W Media’s top 5 tips for appealing to publishers - 1. Identify your USP and concentrate on that. 2. Know your market. Doing a book because your friends say you should is not a good reason – it has to be commercial.
3. Ensure you are active on social media. Followers and likes are also your potential customers – the bigger personal following you have, the bigger the potential customer base. 4. Provide creative marketing ideas that you and/or the publisher could do using these social networks, and other contacts you or they may have. 5. Provide three things: a synopsis (no more that words maximum), a contents and pictures (if your book is any way pictorial).

Remember, writing a book will always take longer than you think and be more difficult than you expect. Only a very small percentage of authors will make their living from writing books – most will have an income from other areas, too. On average it costs a publisher around £30–40K to get a book from conception into print. The idea, the content and mostly, the authorship, need to be top quality to justify this type of investment. Printed book sales are going down, so making a book work financially is getting more and more difficult. Bear this in mind when pitching – put yourself in the position of the publisher and pretend that the £30K is your own money, and then decide whether you would invest it in your idea. If the answer is no, then work out what you can do to make it irresistible before pitching.

Thanks to Annie Adams, F&WMedia, fwcatalogues.co.uk

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