A Writer’s Worst Nightmare

The wish of many people, writers or non writers is to win the lotto; however there is one thing almost everyone secretly likes to achieve in their life; this is to write and publish a book. Yes , they say there is at least one book in each person. It is only a matter of sitting down and persevere. Say you manage to pen and type enough pages that it begins to look like a book. When the story is finally finished, you begin to think about publishing the book. Now the search is on. There are hundreds of publishers. Look in the newest handbook for writer and artist how to proceed. You can go to a normal publisher or you can self publish. Before you make your choice I have a few tips;

• All your work has to be double spaced.
• Your work must have no spelling mistakes if you are like me a non English speaker ask someone else to check your work.
• Proofread your work, the best thing is that you put the manuscript away for a month or so and than read it.
• As mentioned before let a friend or family member read the manuscript, preferable a critical person.
• Make all the necessary changes, don’t take prisoners. Less is better. You’re better off to have a well plotted and written manuscript with less pages than a story that goes into every detail and doesn’t move. Those who know the novels of Stephen King know that he doesn’t need a wild car chasing or  sex scenes to create excitement.
• The hero/s should be in place before the end of the 2nd chapter. Don’t have too many characters it makes the story unnecessary cluttered and complicated. If you think there are too many people in your story you can combine two or three into one stronger character.

Writing a novel is a time consuming task and many people have attempted the art, nevertheless there are only a few of those who bring it as far as to publish their creation.  If you have managed to finish your life’s work, I would say; congratulations for making it this far. Though now comes the real work for which you need a lot of perseverance, in fact you need to be a little mad. Against all the odds you need to proof that your work is worthy to be published. Throughout the time that you were writing your novel you proved to yourself that you are able to finish a big project. Now it is the publisher against you.

Publishers are very difficult to please, in fact they are impossible. They want material that is practically ready to go on the shelves. Most of them favour bite size and simple plots that are easy to follow for the mass reader. After all the publisher is not there to help you but to fill his pockets with your creation. You do all the work and they get the biggest slice of the cake. Most of the time you only get a small percentage.  It is very difficult to find a publisher when you are new to the writing world. Some publishers only accept work from agents, which you have to pay. However if they accept your manuscript you don’t spend any money and they do all the promotion.

What to do when they deny your master piece?

Don’t kick yourself or pull out your hair (what’s left of it) Put the work aside and take a deep breath. Take some time to reflect and than get back to it. It is always a good idea to ask the publisher to give you a reader’s report. Use this report in your advance. Now change your master piece little by little. Make sure to make a copy of the whole novel so that the shock of cutting and pasting isn’t too big. Therefore I also warn people to take the process slow, you are in the middle of a bereavement. Your masterpiece has been denied. Your worst nightmare has come through. Hang in there, you’re not alone.

Self publishing is another option. Nowadays there are several publishers who assist writers to publish their book for a small fee. You can use to print on demand (POD) this way you don’t have to spend too much money all at once. If you go for this option you have to be aware that you have to do a lot yourself, like promoting your book. It is best to compare the options that are available, so shop around. Often you have to buy an ISB number so that you can sell your books on different sites and they can order them.

Here are the best options to POD available at this moment.

http://Webook.com Is a free site were anyone can submit their work. You can sign up as a writer, reader, editor. The good thing of this site is that the community reads your work and from time to time people’s work is published by the site for free.

http://writersservices.com Is another community of writers. They are free to join and have several services like reader’s report and an editorial service, which are not free, but relatively quick.

http://lulu.com asks € 8.16 per book and € 4080.00 per 500 copies.

http://createspace.com asks €3.63 per book. They publish books, DVDs, Cd’s.

http://bowker.com is an ISBN Bower sells single ISB N’s. ISB N’s are used by libraries, booksellers for ordering, listing and stock content. An ISBN can also be added as an identifier for ebooks.

I researched other sites but these are the best ones, so this will save you a lot of time. The benefits of self publishing is that you are your own boss. However this can mean that you are also your own worst enemy. If you want people to read your work and submit positive critic and feedback on your work, you must make sure your book is worth it.