Gathering Place Connections.com

When I started writing my first novel, we had 35,000 new books that year. The year was 2000. Last year being 2009, the figures came in 764,448 new books in one year. How do we cope with this kind of onslaught of new information? How does a publishing industry handle this? In 2010, they expect it to increase.

What has changed in the last decade? It is self-publishing. It has become easier to get yourself published. Even seasoned authors are moving to self-publishing because they were upset with their publishers. Publishers have become callous because it is so important to stay alive and make a profit. They do not have crystal balls that will tell them what books will make money for them. A publishers had a lot of mouths to feed because of their overhead. Getting a book published isn’t cheap. Marketing is the biggest expense.

I remember a story that I read in Reader Digest about a publisher talking about the publishing industry. He told the story without naming the titles of the books or his company. The story started off with him talking about a book that they were really excited about. Six months before they published it, they started advertising the new book. They spent a lot of money on it.

When the book came out, the sells were so, so. They were sick about it because they had spent a lot of money on advertising. Soon after, they published this book. An Argentina leader happened to mention that he really liked a book during an interview.

At the moment, the book wasn’t a big seller. After the interview aired, the publisher had orders of 50,000 in the first month. It happened to be the same publishers who put a lot of money into a book that didn’t take off immediately. They were relieved to have another book pickup and bring in revenue. So they could keep their doors open.

Books sell because a buzz has been created. With self-publishing changing the industry, you can make a lot of expense mistakes publishing your own book. Like a publisher, you can have a book just sit there. Self-publishing does have some down sides to it. Bookstores and Libraries do not buy from publishers. They have a system and they purchase books through it.

One is you can have problems getting your book into the largest wholesalers. Ingram is the largest wholesaler. Bookstores buy from them the most. Libraries tend to purchase from Baker and Taylor. They both are trying to capture both markets. Baker and Taylor happens to be the second largest wholesaler of books. If you want to work with Ingram directly, you won’t be able too. They will only order from publisher with ten books or more in print. This makes it hard when you are a self-published.

Ingram will put your books into their system through distributors but they will not stock your book. It is expensive for you to go through distributors and they do nothing to promote your book. All promotion has to come from you as the author. Even if you go with a publisher, the author promoting their book is everything. This is why previously published authors are moving to self-publishing. If they are doing the work, why not keep more of the profit.

If you are a new author, everything I’m telling you can very intimidating.  I haven’t told you everything.  I’ve only scratched the surface of what goes on behind the scenes. When you write a novel, children picture book, or a non-fiction book, you really need to know if readers will like your product before you print it.

You always have questions when your book is a manuscript. Can the book create a buzz? Will someone show me how to navigate the system? This is why you want a publisher. You hope they will take you by the hand and mother you through the system. They won’t do it. Publishers have become hard nosed. They have too. It’s business. They can’t afford the time to mother you.

We at Gathering Place Publisher understand the frustration. We understand your desire to test the waters and find out if your book has merit. You’re praying that someone will give you a chance. Today, publisher are passing on manuscripts and picking up books that have been self-published. Why take a chance, when you can pick up a book that the public likes. The guesswork it out of it. This is what Dan Brown did with the Da Vinci Code.

Here at Gathering Place Publishers, we are working on a mentoring program that can help you navigate through the jungle of publishing. Right now, we want to determine how many people want help in getting published and it in what areas. We want to hear from you. The response will determine how we structure our program.

If you are interested to watch it unfold, please sign up for email updates. We’ll be ask you to surveys along the way, so we can determine the best way to structure our program. We need your help first. If you are interested, please tell your friends and sign up. So we can start to send you surveys to determine what you need the most.