Publisher Services

Come on!...Get published! 

Before I can begin to help you with your publishing needs, it is important to touch upon a few important aspects of publishing and printing. I have had to discover and learn this information by myself. I hope the information below will assist you in deciding if self-publishing is for you.

Have you ever told someone, “One of these days I’m going to write a book!” Or, have you ever said, “I wrote a book and now I’m going to get it published?”..... 

Believe it or not, there are a lot of “unpublished” authors in the world who should be published. Good luck, though. Getting “published” by a traditional publishing house is one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish in a lifetime.

I am little different than most folks....I tend to knock down challenges I face with three little words...RESEARCH...RESEARCH...RESEARCH....

In fact, I'm a little obsessed with research....If I have a question....I research it until I have a satisfactory answer.  I will search everywhere and find everything I can until I have exhausted the subject....Like I said...I'm different. But when I embark on an adventure, I am pretty confident of where I'll end up...

When I decided to open a publishing company I knew that I would face challenges like I have never known before. Beyond the technical side of designing a book and creating a website for marketing, I had never really considered the promotion side. I thought I could just drive around to my local bookstores and libraries and they would fall over themselves to buy my books....Didn't happen! I learned that having the right marketing plan is almost as important as having a good book. As I dug into the subject matter, I came across some very interesting and sobering statistics.

--The New York Times reported that "According to a recent survey, 81% of people feel that they have a book in them...and should write it." If you do the math, that represents over 200 million people in the U.S. who want to write a book in their lifetime! No wonder self-publishing is thriving as never before!

--From 8,000 to 11,000 new publishers enter the field every year, they are mostly self publishers.

--There are about 1.5 million books in print at any one time in the U.S.

--Over 195,000 new titles are published each year in this country.
Source: http://www.selfpublishingresources.com/Booknews.htm

Do you want to see more publishing statistics?  and follow the links to some great sites for information.

After reading all of these links I discovered some very sobering facts one after another, but none stuck so soundly as these TWO....

1. There is some real competition out there.

2. The chances of success are very much against the uninitiated.

So, being a very proactive guy, I set out to initiate myself. After months of research, I ran into many new and varying situations, but it all came down to four basic issues for me, as an author, wishing to get my book published.

                                1. I have written a book.

                                2. I cannot draw a crooked line freehand.

                                3. How do I get my book printed?

                                4. How do I get my book distributed?

Do any of these sound familiar to you?...Well...let's explore each of them in a little more depth....See if you can identify with any of these issues.

1. I have written a book!

Congratulations!...That is quite an accomplishment in and of itself. You should be very proud of yourself. There are many who will say that "someday I'm going to write a book," but, they never do. It takes a lot of self-discipline and self-sacrifice to hide away from the world and write. It is a very lonely profession. So do not take the fact that you wrote a book for granted. It IS a VERY big thing.

But just because you wrote a book does not mean it is any good. I felt your twinge with that one. "What do you mean it is not good. Are you crazy?....It is the best thing ever written!"...You know what?....It may be!....but if I have learned anything in twenty-five years of writing, it is this.

 The writer is the worst editor!

What I mean by this is that you are too close to your work. The story is well within you. You understand the characters, you know what they will do, how they will react, and how they speak. To you, the plot is all too clear. The storyline makes sense to you. You understand all of this, but, will your reader understand what you intended? Have you written it in a way that will capture your reader and not let them go until they have finished your book?...I don't know the answer to this question, but I can tell you this....A professional editor does! An editor will tell you truthfully whether or not your book has any promise. A good editor will be brutally honest with you. If a professional editor doesn't follow your plot structure or understand your characters, the reading public will destroy your book and you can forget anyone reading it except maybe your family...but I'm betting they won't like it either.

Also, even after twenty-five years of writing and editing my own work, I still find typos, grammatical errors, and misspellings that I would swear were never there before. I know the writing gremlins are messing with me. Unless you are a real seasoned editor with the ability to be very objective and meticulous about details, don't try to edit your own work. Further, unless you have good grammar skills, punctuation skills, and grasp effective sentence structure, forget about doing the final editing. Do yourself a favor....hire a professional editor...It will be money very well spent. After all, you have spent a good portion of your life writing the book. Wouldn't you like to finish the project and publish it to rave reviews?....

2. I cannot draw a crooked line freehand.

That's me....I simply have no talent for illustration. If you are writing a novel, then you probably don't have much to illustrate, but the cover will need designing. However, if you are writing a children's picture book, then the illustrations will be crucial to the success of your book.

Hire a pro, not Aunt Millie, who used to draw pictures for all her family during the holidays. Most of today's professional illustrators use expensive computers and design software to prepare camera-ready artwork. A professional illustrator knows how to produce the illustration which best translates the words into a visual form. Also, if you are not a professional illustrator then words and phrases like, 300 dpi and layered vector graphics, won't mean much to you until you try to get the illustrations printed....By then, you'll be looking to take a short leap off a tall building.

Illustrations are critical to a children's picture book. They must present the perfect representation of the words or paragraphs they are intended to illustrate. Also, working closely together with an illustrator, as a team, you,  the author, need to determine such things as  will the illustrations cover the entire page? Will the pictures be segregated from the words on an opposite page, or will they be on the same page? Will the pages be prepared in portrait or landscape? Will the text be a part of the illustrations or will they be independently layered upon the illustrations later? These are just a few of the questions that will arise during the illustration phase of designing your book. The importance of having a professional illustrator can be easily measured when the books start selling and the money starts coming in.

3. How do I get my book printed?
 

Okay, here we go!...This is where the chaff gets separated from the wheat. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of book printers out there just waiting to print your book. They all have different equipment that can print this trim size or that trim size....What is a trim size, you ask?...Glad you asked that question....

A printer prints....In the publishing world there are two basic forms of printing....the digital printing method and the offset printing method. Both printing methods end by cutting pages, or, in other words more germane to this discussion, they "trim" the pages to fit a specific size book. Different printers use different equipment that has the ability to "trim" a book into different sizes. In the book world, there are many trim sizes to choose from.

-- What is trim size?
The final size of a printed page after excess edges have been cut off is the trim size. Crop marks to indicate where to cut are printed in the edges that are then trimmed after printing.

The following chart is taken from the website of Creatspace.com, an affiliated company of Amazon.com. (Please note that Createspace.com is for publishers ONLY. An independent author cannot use Createspace.com.)

Standard trim sizes (shown in bold) are supported with downloadable cover templates. The minimum page count for all books is 24 pages. All trim sizes are listed in a width x height format.

Illustrator Joshua McGill's Website