Let’s take a look at how you would get published via Traditional Publishing methods.
First of all, you would need to get the attention of a publisher. Therein lays the first of many obstacles. You see, every week, publishers are inundated with thousands upon thousands of manuscripts from talented hopefuls just like you! Imagine entering your office on Monday and being greeted with over one thousand packages, all with your name on them. Obviously, the chances of one manuscript rising to the top of the pile are slim to none.

But say for a moment that somehow the publisher DOES select your manuscript. There are a few caveats that you need to be aware of before you order up the Champaign!

1. Firstly, the publisher controls ALL aspects of the book-to-be. It is, in practicality, HIS book that YOU are writing, so you must defer to him regarding the content, the look etc!

2. You need to be aware of the long window of time between when you hand in the completed manuscript and when the final copy of the book is stocked on the shelves for sale. If the focus of your writing is in any way time-sensitive, your work may well be out of date before it is even published!

3. Don’t plan on making MILLIONS. The standard fare for most authors is a measly 8% commission per copy! When a book sells for $29.99, you get a whopping $2.40-enough to go to Starbucks!

4. Now the good news is that IF a bookstore decides to carry your book, they will pay for all of the books that they stock. However, don’t cash the cheque just yet! The bad news is that whatever they DON’T sell in 90 days, they will return and expect a refund!

SELF-PUBLISHING

Now don’t despair! There is more than one way to get a book out to the hungry masses! Consider the example of Marjan (pronounced Mar-yahn) Glavac. In 1997, Marjan was teaching in a high school in London, Ontario, Canada where he was approached by a publisher to work on a book. For several months, Marjan toiled until finally he had his first three chapters complete. However, when he contacted his publisher again, she told him that she already had two other authors working on exactly the same thing!

Despite the letdown, he decided to press on and finish the project and see where that would take him.
Marjan knew that, once complete, the book had to be printed, then distributed, then sold if he were to make any money (assuming, as he did, there was a market for his book).

One Thousand Hours Later…

It took Mr. Glavac about one thousand hours to complete his work. This gave him 200 pages of material that his wife faithfully edited. The next step was to send a perfect sample of each and every page to the press that was waiting to start the print run. This was where they ran into trouble: “For some reason, my printer at home suddenly refused to work properly! I couldn’t believe it! Here we were with a book waiting to be published and the clock was ticking and my printer was smearing every page that I printed. I finally had to run across town in the middle of the night and borrow a laser printer from a friend of mine!”

Head North, Young Man

By himself, Marjan had found a press that agreed to print his book. The deal worked in this way: to cover the printing of a minimum number of books, Marjan would open an ‘account’ with the press by depositing a minimum of two thousand dollars with them. When they had more money, they could deposit it and get more books printed. The more books they wanted, the more money it would be.

Imagine their excitement on the day that their first shipment of books arrived! Three thousand copies shipped and stored in the Glavac garage! Unfortunately Marjan discovered a huge glob of ink in the centre of every single book. The entire shipment was useless and had to be returned!

The Do-It-Yourselfers

To get his books sold, Glavac then contacted local bookstores. “The first question that they ask you is ‘Do you have a distributor?’ Bookstores make no bones about the fact that they really do not want to deal with self-publishers. It was very frustrating! I thought that my original contact with a real publisher would have made some kind of difference-boy, was I wrong!”

So he set about contacting distributors, which was almost another road block in itself.
“Distributors, like presses, are not willing to take on any risk themselves. They all want a minimum of ten thousand copies which, of course, I would have to print at my expense. Plus, if they go bankrupt, you are in danger of losing all of those books that you just paid for!”

After some thought, Marjan decided to forego the risks and simply sell their product out of their garage. This required spending more money and more time! They needed to purchase envelopes, postage and labels. Whenever an order came in, it had to be packed up and mailed out again as quickly as possible.

Against All Odds-A Best Seller!

Despite the obstacles, Glavac printed over 9000 books and sold 7000 of that number between 1998 and 2005. That equates to a best seller in Canada and also to over $83,000 in gross revenue for Marjan!

Knowing the risks and labour involved, would Best Selling Author Marjan Glavac self-publish a book again? “Not likely! I’m still going to follow my dreams and continue to publish, but I’ve found a better way to do it that carries no pressure, no risk, little labour and ensures that everything I publish always up-to-date, no matter what!”

E-BOOK AUTHORING

The ‘better way’ that Marjan is referring to is called eBook Authoring. Its fans and its benefits are many. For starters, there is no overhead cost and no inventory of product to keep on hand. Also, as an electronic file, it can be sent as a Portable Document Format (PDF) to any editor in mere seconds, making it easy to shop around. One of its best features, though, is that copies of it can be bought literally 24/7 without you lifting a finger! And when some of the material becomes dated, you, the author, simply update it, re-PDF it and continue selling it: a true living document!

“I love e-books because they are so practical and easy!” exclaims Glavac. “My last e-book was over 100 pages but it took me only 150 hours to complete it including editing, graphics and setting up a website to sell it! And in the last eight months, I’ve made over $6800, some of it while I slept! In fact in my first 24 hours, I sold 123 copies and earned $2 948.31 USD.”

So Easy, and Still Legal!
The road to successful e-book authoring is radically different, and much more practical, than that of traditional publishing and self-publishing. It all begins with finding a market.
“The first thing that you need to do is make sure that there is a market out there for what you want to sell.” says Glenn Dietzel, of awakentheauthorwithin.com. “Send out surveys to peers, business people, anyone connected to your area of interest and find out exactly what they are looking for.”

Once you know there are people willing to buy what you are offering, you need to get their email addresses. Usually this is done by offering a newsletter or a smaller eBook which the prospects will receive in exchange for their address. Through this process, you build a list of willing, interested people who gladly receive your emailed newsletters about their topic of interest. They will be a great resource to you as you survey them in search of content or even a suitable title for your projected e-book.

Once the book is complete, you know that you already have a large list of potential customers waiting to make a purchase from your website! Price-wise, you can charge $27 to $97 for every product you sell with NO costs to cover. And the more you market the book to your list, the more you will sell!

So do yourself a favor-when you decide that it’s finally time to show the world what YOU have to offer, become an e-book author and let your market make you a success, even while you sleep!

“What If You Could Instant Access To A New York
Publisher Without An Agent and Without A Formal
Book Proposal?”
How? By Following This Simple, Proven System for
Authoring Success…