That’s how one of my clients put it when asking what stands between a finished manuscript and books in hand.

“How do I get my book printed?” is the obvious question. Hundreds of companies have sprung up in response to the tremendous surge in selfpublished books over the last twenty years. Some of these companies handle only one item in the bundle of services required, others offer to do everything.

Most complaints involve dissatisfaction with promises to promote the book. selfpublishers are advised to be wary of such promises, even from companies in business for a long time. Examine printing or publishing contracts carefully before entering into an agreement.

The second most common reported complaints concern the quality of the printed books. Some companies deliver a disappointing product, so you should ask for samples of their work before placing an order. The best way to ensure getting a book that looks like it came from Random House or Simon & Schuster is to work with a top notch book designer (see below) and an equally talented artist to prepare your cover. The book designer will be able to steer you toward a printer who does fine work.

As a public speaker, your events provide an ideal platform to sell your books. Hence, you have less need for the all-in-one printers/publishers/promoters (listed below) than other selfpublishers who have no built-in book-selling platform. Maintaining complete control of your book by contracting directly with a book manufacturer is the most profitable way to market your book.

There’s more to it than selecting who will press ink onto paper. To avoid delay, a few other things need to be in place by the time your manuscript is finalized.

ISBN. (International Standard Book Number) Even if you expect to sell your book only at your events, you should obtain an ISBN because you never know what opportunities may come your way.

Bookstores won’t touch a book that doesn’t have an ISBN printed on its back cover, neither will most of the so-called nontraditional outlets: gift shops, specialty stores, big box retailers, and so on.

Although some printers listed below will provide an ISBN as part of their printing service, I advise against this because all book orders will then go to them, not to you or your fulfillment firm. Contact isbn.org to obtain your own ISBN so you’ll retain control of your book. Allow a few weeks to get this done.

WHAT ABOUT BARCODES?

(This section (between the quotes) is by courtesy of Budget Book Design)

“The ISBN for your book is easily translated into a worldwide compatible bar code format called a Bookland EAN (European Article Number). Every bookstore chain and most smaller bookshops use bar code scanning at the checkout register.

Putting the bar code on your book is part of the book cover designer’s job, and it’s a simple one. Using a software program, the designer types in your ISBN and out pops the bar code in just the right place on your back cover. You can put your book’s retail price near the bar code on the back cover if you want to. Doesn’t mean retailers will always have to charge the full amount. Using their computers, they can tie your Bookland EAN code to a sale price, and that’s what will appear on the register when your book is scanned.

If you are using a bar code, it must be black or a color dark enough to be scanned. Keep this in mind when counting the number of colors on your cover.

Receive your barcode in less than 36 hours for only $25.00.”

COVER ARTWORK. Some printers have many stock covers you can choose among. However, these stock covers look canned to today’s sophisticated book buyers. Stock covers also lack much power to catch a prospective buyer’s attention. Since the cover influences most potential book buyers profoundly, paying for a good one is a sound investment. Many publishing professionals contend that a strong selling cover will double sales (most of the same people say a powerful title will double sales again). If you want something better than a printer’s stock cover, contact a graphic artist who specializes in book covers. Here are three highly talented cover design firms. All three have excellent websites you should check before making a decision.

Dunn+Associates Design

No one surpasses Dunn’s amazing portfolio of work, and I recommend this firm highly. www.Dunn+Associates Design.com

Hannus Design

dick@hannusdesign.com

I have referred clients to Hannus Design and they have all been pleased with cost and quality of the covers Dick created. He’s located in Massachusetts. He does the artwork for paperback covers, or the dust jackets for hardcovers.

1106 Design LLC

Michele DeFilippo, Owner

610 East Bell Road, #2-402

Phoenix, AZ 85022-2393

Phone: (602) 866-3226 Fax: (602) 866-8166

email: michele@1106design.com

This firm has an impressive portfolio of work to their credit.

BOOK DESIGN. John Reinhardt says, “I provide both the design and composition of the book. Proofs will be sent back and forth until the book is approved for printing. I then supply the printer with all of the necessary files, fonts, images, prepress info, and final set of laser proofs.”

John Reinhardt Book Design bookdesign.com

143 Grassy Brook Rd.
Brookline, Vermont 05345

email:john@bookdesign.com

phone:1-802-365-4909
toll-free:1-888-305-4710

fax:(802) 365-9273

Budget Book Design

9 Washington Ave.

Pleasantville, NY 10570

Phone: 800-754-7089

Fax: 914-741-6884

jg@budgetbookdesign.com

BOOK MANUFACTURERS/POD PRINTERS

Automated Graphic Services ags.com

AGS is located in Maryland. A California client of mine who had his book printed by AGS was delighted with the results.

Bang Printing bangprinting.com

Bang is located in Brainerd, Minnesota

PRINTERS/PUBLISHERS/PROMOTERS

The services offered by these firms vary. Check them out on the Internet to see if any of them seem to be exactly what you need. Then obtain their publishing agreement and review it carefully. Be sure to obtain your own ISBN from isbn.org so that you maintain control of your book.

Authorhouse.com

Booksurge.com

Infinitypublishing.com

iUniverse.com

Publish America.com

xLibris.com

Ø

On both sides of the Atlantic, the hyphen now gets less use than was the case just five years ago. The latest edition of a prestigious UK dictionary has omitted the hyphen from about 16,000 words. In the US, the same trend has long been evident. More and more people think the hyphen is useless, messy and unnecessary.

Some assume this means that the role of the hyphen in all word compounds will soon be abandoned. Some even say it will soon vanish as a punctuation mark. However, it’s too soon to make that claim, although certainly use of the hyphen has been in a steep decline for at least ten years. Many believe that people just can’t be bothered with it.

Because of the widespread uncertainty of its usage as a short dash used to connect two words (sometimes more than two) many writers and editors simply omit it. However, in its more utilitarian usage—to link two parts of a word, usually syllables, that have to be separated at the end of a justified printed line—continued use of the hyphen seems assured.

Compound nouns generally began as separate or hyphenated words but have a strong tendency over time to collapse into single words. A century ago, writing “to-day” was standard; “teenager” first appeared as “teen-ager”; in the 1800s, “lipstick began as “lip stick,” and was hyphenated in the 1920s on its way to becoming one word.

In America, “email” is taking over from “e-mail” and the more common practice is to omit the hyphen in such words as “postmodern.” The movement is toward “website” rather than “Web site.”

The new The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary lists many hyphenless words such as “leapfrog”, “bumblebee”, “crybaby”, “pigeonhole”, “lowlife”, and “upmarket,” However the SOED retains hyphens for compound verbs such as “court-martial.”

However, hyphen trends flow both ways as many terms return to separate words as in “fig leaf,” “fire drill,” “ice cream,” “pot belly,” “test tube,” and “water bed.”

Unquestionably, the most important issue is to recognize when leaving the hyphen out leaves the meaning unclear. For example, “twenty odd people” means the twenty people who are eccentric, strange and odd; “twenty-odd people” means there are about twenty people in the group being discussed. But most of the time the meaning is clear without the hyphen, so the trend towards omitting it isn’t causing many problems.

No doubt about it: the hyphen is slowly vanishing, but it’s not dead yet. It will at least be around for a long time playing its necessary role to connect the two parts of a word separated when a line of justified type ends in its middle.

Beyond that, writers who care about how fresh their work will seem in a few years will be well advised to follow this rule: when in doubt, omit the hyphen.

This paraphrased version of an item that appeared in Michael Quinion’s .newsletter about English words is reproduced here by permission. Subscribe to this fascinating free newsletter at http://www.worldwidewords.org/ World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2007. All rights reserved.

Most nonfiction books are sold to a trade publisher before they’re written by means of a book proposal (BP). BPs are usually between ten and thirty pages plus one or more sample chapters. Writing a BP that’s strong enough to succeed in today’s highly competitive marketplace is no easy task—but it’s easier than writing the entire manuscript.

What follows is a list of the steps that take a book concept all the way to publication:

1. Write a strong BP.

2. Write personalized query letters to literary agents who have sold similar books in the past urging them to look at your BP. (“Why not send the query letters first, and save time,” you might ask. Because it’s counterproductive. Agents always have lots of book projects going. If they ask for your BP in January and you can’t send it to them until March, they will have forgotten all about asking for it. Be ready to overnight your BP to any agent who asks for it.

3. You continue to query agents until one of them agrees to represent your book to the trade. At this point, the agent may want you to put a different slant on your BP before s/he takes it to market.

4. The agent calls to say they have an offer to publish.

5. On the advice of your agent, you accept the offer and the paperwork flies back and forth, and you get a check for the first installment of your advance against future royalties.

6. Now you write the book. Whether or not you submit early drafts of it to your agent, depends on the agent and the situation.

7. You polish your manuscript exhaustively and submit it. The agent may ask for changes before forwarding it on to the publishers, who also may ask for changes.

8. All changes have been made, and your manuscript goes into production. Nearly a year goes by while the publisher puts your manuscript through various essential steps.

9. Finally, early one morning, the presses roll and before lunch, 5000 or more of your books—in cartons and stacked on skids—are moving across the printing plant’s shipping dock.

10. A few weeks later, your book starts showing up on bookstore shelves throughout the country.

If the BP doesn’t find a trade publisher, why go to the effort and expense of writing the entire 300 to 500 page manuscript? You won’t, unless you plan to self-publish.

Self-publishers don’t have to go through most of the ten steps above, and they don’t have to wait for two years to get books. If you’re a public speaker, having your own book can make even freebie events profitable. A good book that’s well presented from the front of the room will often go home with half or more of the audience. The markup is usually at least 7 times the per copy cost of the book in medium-size print runs from a webpress printer. This means that books sold Back of the Room are very profitable. Say you speak to 30 people. Half buy the book, on which you net $15 each, so you walk away from that small meeting with $225. Stage an event for 100 people and you’ll take home between $750 and $1,000.

One of my clients has a small book that costs him just under a dollar a copy and sells for $19.95. His take-home when he speaks to groups of about 100, as he does several times a month, is nearly $1000 each time.

Writing a BP that stands a good chance of pulling a publishing offer is a larger task than one might think. It’s something like a business plan such as what you’d use to get financial backing to open a restaurant or start a software company.

Good agents, the legitimate ones who really sell books to legitimate publishers, get about 100 BPs a week. They’re busy; their time is precious to them. So your BP has to hit dead-center on the kinds of books they sell. The BP has to be complete; it has to shows them concisely what they want to see—but nothing more. What they want to see includes, among several other things, a chapter by chapter outline of the entire book. .

Many people approach me with the idea of doing a joint venture; that is, no money upfront and we split the proceeds–if any–50/50. I don’t do that anymore, haven’t since I wrote two books with Ed McMahon some years ago. Instead, my writing arrangements are: money upfront at my hourly rate plus a percentage of royalties, if and when they materialize.

No Pills, No Patches, Nothing but a Method that Really Works

Let’s make one thing clear right up front: whether or not you smoke is your business. I’m not telling you to quit. However, you and I know that smoking kills about ten times as many people every year as automobile accidents do. Thus, failing to quit smoking often turns into the worst failure of all: the failure to live a long and healthy life.

Kick-Starting Your Quit

First of all, you have to want to quit. Not your wife or husband, not your girlfriend or boyfriend, not one of your parents—you have to be the one who wants to quit. Not half-heartedly, not on the basis that “I’ll try quitting and if I don’t like it, I’ll keep on smoking,” but a real desire to quit.

Secondly, you have to decide that you actually are willing to quit. You see, there’s a vast difference between wanting to quit and being willing to quit. The first is wishful thinking; the second is the necessary foundation for action.

Once you have made those two life-extending decisions, the rest is easy. We want to emphasize that deciding to quit is a tough decision because to do it you have to be willing to change your view of yourself in a most basic way. Most smokers know that smoking is extremely bad for their health, and yet they smoke anyway. Why?

If you could get a hundred smokers to tell you exactly why they continue smoking even though they know it will shorten their lives, you’d wind up with a lot of different answers. Some think it’s sophisticated to smoke, others feel it’s sexy, macho, devil-may-care—ideas reinforced by costly advertising showing alluring men and women smoking.

The willingness to continue smoking comes from seeing the habit as an essential element of one’s persona. Most people react emotionally against anything threatening to alter their basic personality, that is, the way they see themselves. Some fear the ridicule of smoking friends who may sneer at them for quitting. This is likely, because if you succeed in quitting, your success proves it can be done. This increases the pressure on them to quit too—and they hate that.

But none of this gets at the core reason, which is that all smokers light up because they continually tell themselves they are smokers. There’s a name for this: affirmations. How often have you heard a smoker say, “Yeah, I wish I could quit, but….”

That’s an affirmation, a powerful one. People who say things like that—or think them— reinforce their inner conviction that they are, and will continue to be, smokers.

The easy way to quit is to reverse your affirmations. But take note: if you just affirm that you are “going to quit” or affirm that “I’m going to cut down on my smoking,” you’re likely to smoke more rather than less. Why? Because you’ll be thinking about it more.

You may be saying, “I want to quit. I really do. I’m ready. Stop beating around the blackberries and tell me how I can quit.”

OK, but be forewarned—it can be a jarring experience.

The first step is to copy the following statement. Write it out on a piece of paper. It’s okay to add or change anything to personalize it but you must keep it in the past tense—stating that you have already quit. Otherwise the method won’t work. (The reason why will be explained a bit later. Answers to other questions will also be given.) Here’s the “I’ve Quit Smoking Affirmation (IQSA, pronounced ik-say):.

The IQSA

“Every time I see someone light up a killer weed, I know I’m looking at a dumb jerk (use your own expletive). Cigarettes stink. Tobacco made my mouth taste like a public toilet. But the worst part was all the tar and carcinogenic chemicals that tobacco was shoving into my body.

“Can you believe it? I was actually spending a lot of my hard-earned money for stuff that was poisoning me. I was giving my money to fat cats who are only too happy to pocket profits from selling an addictive drug that kills three thousand Americans every day. Yes, I was paying for gunk that was restricting my capillaries and wearing my heart out by making it work harder 24/365 (that’s all the time, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year). Not only that, I was running a terrible risk of getting throat or lung cancer, and having to drag an oxygen bottle around with me the last few months of my life.

I wheezed and coughed all the time. Now I know that cigarettes were pouring more than 800 different chemicals into my lungs, but who knows all the ways tobacco was killing me? Only a lamebrain would smoke, and I’m no lamebrain. Hurray for me—I’ve quit smoking. Now my money goes for things that are good for me, not that killer weed.

“It was easy. I just threw the damn things away and stopped. No stupid habit like that is ever going to control me again. When I decide to quit something, that’s it. I quit. End of habit.

I’m done with paying good money for something that was digging my grave. I’m proud of myself for quitting, and I sure feel great since I did. Got more energy, got more wind, feel more alive. It’s great to know that I’m not offending people by blowing smoke and cigarette breath at them. There’s no way I’d ever touch one of the rotten things again.”

How to Make the IQSA Method Work

Copying the I’ve Quit Smoking Affirmation is the first step. Keep the state­ment with you. Read it first thing in the morning, and the last thing before going to sleep at night. The important thing is to really feel the emotions, and especially to thank your­self and really brag on yourself for already quitting.

“Hey, wait a minute,” you may think. “I haven’t actually quit yet. How can I thank myself for something I haven’t done? I mean, how can you lie to yourself? It just doesn’t make sense that you could do that.”

You’re right; you can’t lie to yourself for very long—your subconscious mind won’t stand for it. And that’s why the system works—if you concentrate on feeling the emotions of having beat the habit. You have to put your feelings into reading the IQSA twice daily: first thing every morning and last thing every night. It’s easier to do than you may expect. Don’t think about the difficulties; think about how important it is to you; it is first, last and always a matter of life or death—yours. This is not an exaggeration, as 300,000 Americans every year could testify if tobacco hadn’t killed them.

Here’s my promise. If you follow this plan with sincere intent, within 30 days you will either quit smoking or quit reading your personalized IQSA. You just can’t keep on doing both, not unless you refuse to read the IQSA with complete emotional commit­ment. If you keep on smoking, it simply means you don’t really want to quit. You’d rather show that you’re really addicted, that nothing will let you beat the guys stealing your money and your health.

How does the method play out? Just let it happen. After driving the IQSA into your mind twice a day, you’ll find yourself reluctant to light up. You’ll be talking to yourself about dumping your supply of tobacco product, and getting rid of your ashtrays. The time will come when you don’t want those things around, don’t fight it, just let your feelings rule.

If you don’t feel the right emotions strongly at first, don’t let it discourage you. Keep at it. The right emotions—repulsion at the idea of smoking, and delight that you have quit—will take hold when you master the skill of momentarily putting yourself where you want to be. As you do this, make sure to look at the world through your own eyes. It’s important not to fly overhead observing yourself. This method works best when you feel the reality you want to create, rather than when you merely daydream about it.

It’s not necessary to fight yourself about changing. As long as you continue to read your IQSA twice a day, taking a few moments to let the emotions grab hold, you are reprogramming your mind. Continue doing so and your activity will move in the desired direction.

Remember, your IQSA has to be cast in the, I’ve already quit mode. It’s no good at all repeating, “I’m going to quit….” Being no more than wishful thinking, it has no power to bring about change. Even worse, it simply confirms that you are a hard-core smoker.

And be aware that you also may feel reluctant to continue reading the IQSA emotionally. That happens because your old smoker personality is fighting to stay front and center. This is the decisive point—this is where you either quit smoking or quit the IQSA. It’s when your true determination to put health ahead of habit either wins or loses.

What about using this in conjunction with one or more of the pills, inhalers, and patches that are commercially available to help you quit smoking? Many people get the job done using the IQSA method without chemical support, but the vital thing is to quit. Do what works for you.

How to Use the IQSA Method to Break Any Bad Old Habit, or Establish Any Good New One

The key is to write an emotional affirmation like the IQSA, and review it twice a day as suggested above. The more nitty-gritty you make your affirmation, the better. Repetition at least twice a day as stated above is essential.

How many affirmations can you have going at any a time? It depends. If you tend to get stressed out by change in your personal habits, take it one at a time. If you thrive on change, you can probably handle several at once. Just hold it down to the number you have time to get emotional about—with practice, you can do this in a few seconds for each affirmation.

But be very careful, how you use this knowledge. Be aware that wrongly used affirmations can kill. This is especially true about losing weight. Affirmations are what allows anorexics starve themselves to death in homes where food is abundant.

What’s the cost of this program? Nothing. It’s free. However, it will enable you to add many years of health and happiness to your life. If you feel grateful, send a contribution to my PayPal account—about half of what you save the first month that you stop buying poisonous tobacco products. Your contribution will enable me to spread the word faster, and save more people from dying years ahead of their time because they can’t break their nicotine habit. In any case, breathe deeply and live long. <>

You are probably a member of one of my projected book’s three target audiences:

(a) As yet unpublished writers in search of a more certain way to get published who are willing to explore the possibilities of collaborating with an expert—but don’t know how to go about doing this successfully.

(b) Published writers seeking greater professional success.

(c) Experts in some topic (often a new niche within a larger subject) who want to publish a book without having to grind out the whole thing by themselves.

We’ll talk about writers first.

If you’re an aspiring but as yet unpublished writer, get ready to give your drive toward publication a tremendous boost. Do that by pounding the four commitments that appear below into your skull. Write them down. Paste them in your hat, on the mirror in your bathroom and on the 3 x 5 cards you’ve snapped a rubber band around so they’re handy to review in spare moments:

(a) I write at least an hour every day.

If it’s impossible for me to sit at a computer, I still write at for least an hour. If I can’t do it in one shot, I write for at least 20-minutes three times a day—longhand or shorthand. (There’s a third way to seize precious writing periods from your busy day: get organized so you can dictate to a recorder during the otherwise dead time when you’re driving somewhere. See more about writing via dictation in Chapter ###.

(b) I avoid writer’s block and write fast when I’m ready to capture words because during every unstressed moment of the day, I think about what I’m going to write tonight after work or tomorrow before work.

Do you see what I’m getting at here? Don’t quit your day job until you have enough cash coming in to carry yourself and your responsibilities. Tom Clancy kept his insurance agency going after THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER became a great success. Not until his second book also hit the bestseller lists did Clancy cut loose from his day job.

(c) I want writing success, which I’ve never had. Therefore, I must do things I’ve never done.*

* With thanks to my friend in Florida, James Amps III, a dynamic keynoter and public speaker, who says, “If you want something you’ve never had, do something you’ve never done.”

((d) Every day I not only write, I also read something that will improve my writing skills or knowledge of the writing industry.

For nearly thirty years, I’ve been getting queries about writing a book for or with someone. Quite often the person making the query is not well informed about what’s involved in getting a book written to professional standards, finding a legitimate agent to represent it who will sell it to a trade publisher, and then promoting it heavily enough to make it a financial success.

This as a more informative response to all such queries than I could provide individually. After reading these words—and after examining your willingness to invest time, energy and your hard-earned cash to get your book written, published and selling in bookstores across the nation—you may or may not want to go ahead.

However, if you are willing and able to go ahead, please let me hear from you again. Helping people get published is my profession.

Some of the people who will read this message know little about how the publishing business operates today, so I’ll define terms as we go along.

Trade

Trade refers to the legitimate, royalty paying publishers such as Simon & Schuster, Random House, Pearson, Thomson, Penguin Putnam and Berkley—to name some of the largest ones. Beyond the giants are a large number of smaller publishers. On the average, the trade book industry issues 75 different new titles every working day, 150,,000 each year.

A key fact to keep in mind is that trade publishers generally take nine months to a year to publish a book AFTER they have a fully approved final manuscript. What does this mean to you?

If your manuscript isn’t complete and in publishable shape today, your book won’t arrive in bookstores for two years or more. Contrast that with self-publishing, where you can have books a month after your manuscript is complete and all other prepress requirements are in your printer’s hands.

Vanity

Legitimate, royalty-paying trade publishers never advertise seeking authors. (Anytime they do advertise, its purpose is to sell the books they have already published.) Firms who advertise seeking authors are called “vanity presses” because they will print anything anybody will pay them to print. I hear at second or third hand about a lot of major dissatisfaction with vanity houses. They tend to make lavish promises they don’t keep. Going to a vanity press is a sure way to fill your garage with books that will never sell.

Self-publishing

Self-publishing is totally different from vanity publishing, although in both, the author pays for the book’s production and printing. However, self-publishers know how to market their books—often doing so at their public speaking events. Thousands of self-published books written by or for public speakers (some written by me) have been very profitable for the speakers who commissioned them. An outstanding example is HOW TO MASTER THE ART OF SELLING, which I wrote for Tom Hopkins. After being self-published by Tom, it was picked up by a major trade publisher, went back to press 42 times, was translated into several languages and sold nearly two million copies worldwide.

POD Publishing

POD means Print on Demand. With this system, you only print books as you sell them. However, your costs per copy are so high it’s difficult to sell them at a profit. But at least your garage doesn’t get packed with books.

E-books

This is the least expensive way to get your message out because no paper and ink is involved. At least in theory, several hundred million people around the globe can access your book if it’s on a website—and even pay you for it. However, it takes a lot of skillful work to sell enough of them to make it worthwhile. Buy HOW TO GET YOUR E-BOOK PUBLISHED from Writer’s Digest Books if you’re interested in putting out an E-book.

I hope this information will be helpful to you. If you have more questions, I’m available for phone consultation at $40.00 for a half hour, $70 for a full hour, payable in advance. Schedule a mutually convenient time by email to w@jamison.org/

I am on Pacific Standard Time.

If you like, include some of the issues you’d like to discuss in your email.

Here’s How to Nail Down Your First Assignment as a Collaborator

If you lack substantial published writing credits, you’ll have to pay your dues to get your first assignment. This means you’ll need to do the first one for no money upfront and a 50/50 split of future royalties with your expert.

You may feel like screaming, “Hey, wait a minute. This isn’t the speedy trip to big money that your title promised.”

Ah, but it is.

Consider the alternative. You don’t have any credits for published writing. Unless you do something drastically different from what you have been doing, in five—even twenty-five—years, the odds say you still won’t have any. Compared to that, writing one book for no money upfront and seeing it on bookstore shelves a year or two from now is rapid entry into paid publication. It’s not a tortoise and hare race; the race is between fiction’s comatose turtle and nonfiction’s healthy jackrabbit.

The Nonfiction Hit

Much of the above realities hit me full force while reading Publishers Weekly late in the 1970s. The article contained a chart comparing the number of titles published in several categories, along with sales figures. The totals shocked me. By switching to nonfiction, I saw that two factors would give my chances of getting published a huge boost:

(a) Nonfiction accounts for ten times as many titles as fiction. Multiply my pub chances by ten.

(b) The number of unpublished writers trying to break into fiction is at least ten times the number aiming at nonfiction. (This is a conservative estimate. Check it out at any writer’s conference or club meeting. Chances are you won’t find many people working on a nonfiction book.) Multiply my pub chances by ten one more time.

Let’s do the math (really a mind strainer) 10 x 10 = 100. Your chances of getting published are multiplied by at least 100 simply by deciding to switch from fiction to nonfiction.

Scoffers will say, “OK, but my pub chance was zero to begin with, so 100 times zero is still diddly-squat.

It didn’t zero out for me. The more I studied breaking into nonfiction, the harder the reality hit me: I didn’t have enough expertise or credibility in any publishable subject to write a book a trade publisher would take on. So I thought, “OK, I’ll just pick a topic and research and study it until I do have the necessary expertise.”

However, it soon dawned on me that expertise alone wouldn’t necessarily be enough; successful books are written (supposedly) by experts in their niche who also promote the book effectively.

Question: Who cares whether someone else did the actual writing?

Answer: Nobody.

Final Words about Fiction

A few more words and we’ll be done with fiction. Then we’ll get back to how you can race down the rapid road to publication and the financial and emotional satisfactions it brings.

Short stories. The publication of short stores by major magazines has been declining for years and by 2007 had come to almost a complete stop. So had most of what used to be major magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s Weekly. They were laid low by changing tastes and increased competition on every side. Specialty magazines aimed at specific groups of people who shared a certain interest—Surfing, Powder Skiing, Wooden Boat and thousands of others niches—each took a bite out of the general interest, fiction-publishing magazines.

The newer breed of specialty magazines rarely publish fiction; instead they are are filled with nonfiction articles that offer information the editors believe their readers will find interesting.

Novels. You’d think that going to all the trouble of writing a full-length novel would earn you some respect, some consideration. Forget it. Did any agent or publisher ask you to write your novel?

Keep in mind that the publishing industry is a collection of businesses as profit-hungry as giant corporations or the corner Mom and Pop shop are in any industry. It’s all about money; about feeding their bottom line. Nothing wrong with that; I state it not as a criticism but as a hard fact that aspiring writer should have no illusions about. Never forget that publishing, magazines or books, is a business—and a tough one. Publishing companies as well as magazines, particularly start-ups, often close their doors and disappear—frequently owing writers money.

If a publishing company can’t see profit in bringing your book out, they’ll pass on investing in publishing it. They have to invest several thousand dollars—some trade editors claim their cost of putting a book into the marketplace is about $25,000. Since your previous work, if any, hasn’t created an audience for your book, how will they be able to sell enough copies to break even, much less make a profit? You must have a good answer for that question or your book—no matter how well written—won’t get published.

And Do It Right Now In Less Than Two Minutes

Only about a tenth of the new titles published today are fiction if we exclude just one genre, romance, mostly written by and for women. This category is sometimes looked down on, which makes no sense. When westerns were selling strongly, they were just as formulaic in their own way as romance is today; yet western writers enjoyed considerable status. If you’re interested in writing romance, make no mistake about it: it’s a difficult and highly competitive discipline. Breaking into this market requires talent, commitment and persistence of the highest order.

In the middle of the last century the ratio between fiction and nonfiction was about fifty-fifty as to the number of new titles published. However, fiction accounted for considerably more than half of the book industry’s dollar volume. In the following decades, competition from television and other forms of entertainment has greatly reduced fiction’s importance to the book industry.

Most new fiction published today is written by established writers. Only about 500 debut novels (first novels) are now being published in this country each year. That’s barely more than one a day. Sound good? Keep on reading.

At least 200,000 Americans aspire to be writers. There’s some reason to believe the real number runs as high as twenty percent of the population—in other words many, many millions of people. More are based in Australia, Canada and the UK, not to mention India, where English is a second language to the most influential three percent of India’s billion-plus population. Most aspirants everywhere are intent on writing novels. Few of these hopefuls realize they are competing to be one of the annual crop of just 500 debut novelists. OK, multiply that number by 10. Say there are 5,000 debut novels printed in the USA each year (don’t quote me on that number; it’s wildly exaggerated). The odds against success are still hugely discouraging.

So how do you multiply your chances by 100 in two minutes? By deciding to switch to nonfiction. (Actually, you can do that in two seconds, but that sounds like an extreme claim.) If you don’t have enough credibility and expertise in a saleable topic, collaborate with an expert who does. Future posts will tell you exactly how to become a highly successful collaborative writer. <>

Until you publish something, nobody wants to let you write their book. Nevertheless, collaboration is your best chance to get published. I’ll tell you how to do that.

1. Somehow you just can’t seem to break through and see your stuff published by the trade and you aren’t interested in self-pubbing on the Net because you want the prestige that having your book sold in bookstores all over the nation.

2. You are talented, you are determined—all you lack is writing credibility. That’s what it takes to convince any expert who has enough expertise to fill a book that you have what it takes to write their manuscript (MS)1 better than they can. So the first thing they ask is that same old weasel question, “What have you published?”

3. My first published book was a joint venture (JV) with no money upfront; nevertheless, it has been one of my most lucrative books. My share of its earnings run well into six figures so far. Yes, it’s still selling, still earning royalties more than twenty years after publication.

4. What had I published before? Nothing. Literally, not a word other than a handful of letters to the editor of local papers and national magazines—which added up to nothing when you’re talking to someone who might pay you money to work on their book.

5. OK, so what was my writing credibility back then? Let’s examine the concept of writing credibility. First of all, it walks on two legs:

6. (a) Your credibility to yourself. If you aren’t convinced that you have what it takes to complete a powerful MS, how can you expect to convince someone else? How you will overcome this vital challenge? If you don’t know instantly, think this one through. Here are three questions to help you decide what it will take to convince yourself that you are capable of writing a book about an expert’s niche in collaboration with this expert.

7. 1. Do you have the following ready to go?

8. a writing space in your home

9. a computer and printer.

10. Internet access, preferably high speed

11. 2. Have you completed at least one MS? Could be fiction. The important thing is to have finished it, whether or not you were able to sell it.

12. 3. Do you tell people you are a writer? Sure, you’ll get smirked at when they ask what you’ve published, but that just helps you develop the tough hide a pro writer must have. The vital thing is to internalize the concept that you are a professional writer.

13. (b) Your credibility to experts so you can convince them to become your clients.

14. The first expert I worked with was carefully chosen. And, though we didn’t know it then, our timing was right on. I say “we” because choosing this particular expert was my wife’s idea.

15. Here’s how it worked. I knew I could write and complete a long MS because I had already written several novels, none of which were ever in any danger of being published. The important thing was that I had completed them. The first was 682 MS pages or about 170,000 words. The others were shorter. Counting all the rewrites, my first novel probably involved writing half a million words. Add in the other half-dozen novels and several abandoned projects, I must have written at least a million words during what turned out to be my writing apprenticeship.

16. However, writing a large number of words is the least significant aspect of your all-important self-training apprenticeship. Improvement comes from constant study as you write. When you are uncertain about some detail of grammar, punc­tuation, spelling or formatting, research that item until you know how to handle it.

17. My recommendations of the best five books for writers are listed in the Appendix. They will answer most questions so keep them handy. You can also search the Internet. Try both ways, print or Web, and use what’s quickest for you.

18. Also, as you write your apprenticeship half million words, study the trade magazines and sign up on the Web for helpful newsletters. Several that I’ve found helpful are listed in—yep, you guessed it—in the Appendix. If you’ve already written some novels, you will already have gained confidence in your writing skills. Your challenge now is to convert confidence into cash.

1All the acronyms, abbreviations and trade jargon used in this book are explained in the Appendix.