your hands. I'm not much of a cigar smoker, but I usually keep a cigar somewhere near my computer while the typing is going on. Once I hold that manuscript (and I mean the whole thing), I usually light up that cigar. Often it's a bit dried out from sitting by my computer for so long, but it tastes great to me.
There are two editing options now for you to consider. The first is to edit the manuscript yourself, and if you can do that, you are a better person than I. I have a real problem reading my own words for any significant length of time. What's more, I'm a bit sloppy because I know what I'm trying to say and will assume anyone can follow me. You'll save some money here by doing the editing yourself, but personally I don't think it's worth the possible savings.
The editing option I recommend is to find a third party to do this for you. I usually find a retired English teacher or someone who edits material for a living. The costs are usually around $500 and well worth it. You'll have to train your editor, but most of them know what to do. Their job is not to agree or disagree with what you've written. You are the expert, and that's why you've written the book. Their job is to concentrate on grammar and syntax. I know for me, my editor needs to look for a repeated story here or there. Remember, this project may well have been written over a four- or five-month period of time. It's very easy to tell the same story or to use the same analogy two or three times.
Keep in mind that whoever decides to publish your book will have their own editor look over your book and suggest changes. The goal here is to have not only a great book but a well-written book as well. With a small investment in an editor, that's just what you'll have.
With manuscript in hand, it's time to get a publisher. Once again, there are two ways to go here. You can try to find a publisher or publish yourself. There are books written on this subject alone, but allow me to cut through the rhetoric a bit and lay out both sides of this equation for you. If you want to avoid self-publishing your book, you can lay out the ideas you have for your book, write a sample chapter, get that proposal together, and see what happens. Not me.
Many speakers – and by many I've heard numbers as high as 95 percent of professional speakers – self-publish their books. Self-publishing means the authors pay the publisher to publish their work. Their books are printed and bound beautifully. The publishers they use leave no trace of the fact they were paid to do the work. Companies like Amazon now self-publish for no charge, and e-books obviously require no binding.
You can spare yourself the time and trouble of creating a proposal because the self-publishing companies will be selling you to allow them to do the work. Why not? They are not taking any risk whatsoever. It is purely business. Most print on demand, and some will save you a few extra dollars and print as many as you would like.
Wait. There's more. For each book you sell, you now stand to make five to six times more money. More money per sale, no begging a publisher, not detectable by your average reader, and quicker to market are some pretty powerful selling points for self-publishing. So, what's the catch?
The catch has to do with distribution. With conventional publishers, you become partners with their marketing team. By self-publishing you are your own marketing team. Some self-publishing companies offer a marketing program, copyediting, graphics, and other options, but if you avail yourself of these services, your costs will rise dramatically.
There are wonderful stories of authors who could not get published, self-published their manuscripts, sold a lot of books, and then got picked up by publishers. Those are wonderful stories. Unfortunately, they are few and far between.
If your goal is simply to make money and gain credibility within your seminars, self-publishing may be the way to go. However, if you want to tough it out and take a shot at creating a book that can find its way into anyone's hands, the traditional publishing route may be for you.
Whatever decision you make, my suggestion is to write the book – now. The sample chapter and proposal idea is a good one. I just think it's the primary reason why 99 percent of the people who want to write a book never do. Once you write that sample chapter and send off that proposal, guess what usually happens? The publishing business chews it up, and you never write the book.
Write the book. In fairness to the publishing industry to which I personally owe so much, it's not all its fault. Imagine being an editor sitting in an office and having dozens of book proposals land on your desk on a daily basis. Tunneling through, here comes another proposal. It looks interesting, and then you get to the experience part: “Never written a book before and has 18 pages written for a 200-page book. Next.”
Write the book. When I wrote my first book, I decided to treat the book proposal much like a real estate proposal. It's not the price that holds up so many of these contracts. In fact, it's the contingencies. Sometimes it's a home inspection. Sometimes it's a contingency on the sale of the buyer's house, but one thing is for sure. The more contingencies that are attached to the contract, the worse your chances are of closing the deal.
Write the book. My theory is a simple one. When it comes to writing and selling your book, get rid of the contingencies. The first one to get rid of is the contingency that dogs both you and your publisher. “This person has never written a book before, and I've got to try to believe that with no track record, this person can hit every writing deadline and get me another 125 pages. Hmm…”
Write the book. If you do this, you get rid of the biggest objection and contingency your publisher may have. It's easier for you to sell and easier for your publisher to buy. The only negative might be that your publisher will want the book but will want you to change certain things. It might mean more rewrites than you would like. However, if you have a publisher that wants your book, nothing else really matters.
The most important thing to do is to write! Nothing else matters if you don't write! That's why when I work with new authors, I always have them print out this quote and place it where they intend to do most of their writing. It reads like this:
Planning to write is not writing. Thinking about writing is not writing. Talking about writing is not writing.
Researching to write, outlining to write – none of this is writing.
Writing is writing.
What happens if you write a great book and can't find a publisher to take it on? Simple, you publish it yourself. There are those in the seminar business who swear by this approach to publishing. Their arguments are good.
Publishing a book yourself can allow you to move from a 7.5 to 15 percent royalty, to a 90 to 100 percent royalty. Remember, you are paying to publish your own book, so most of the sales belong to you.
To me, distribution is the biggest downfall of publishing a book yourself. You will be able to get your book on a bunch of Internet sites, including Amazon.com, but the rest of your distribution is up to you. Self-publishers are working their way through this problem by offering their marketing services to you…for a price. It's not inexpensive, but the larger self-publishing companies have effective marketing departments. If I were to go the self-publishing route, I would engage their marketing programs. Remember, if you write a book and no one sees it, the book is not doing you any good other than establishing a perceived sense of credibility.
Funny that I should include the word “pride” as a factor to consider, but in fact I have a lot of pride surrounding the publishing of my books. I sold them myself and affectionately refer to them as my children. In theory, anyone can have a book self-published, but not everyone can find a publisher.
I have gotten into some pretty interesting debates
