How Find a Publisher For Your Book

 

You’ve just spent 10,000 hours in front of the laptop writing your book. Maybe it’s a mystery or an action-adventure yarn.  Maybe it’s a Suspense Thriller.  Or maybe it’s a how-to book on building wooden boats.  Whatever it is, you have spent painstaking hours creating it, editing it and spell-checking it.  Each chapter is as perfect as you can make it.  It goes without saying that you are absolutely proud of your creation and now you want to share it with the world.  But you are not Nora Roberts or Dean Koontz or Stephen King.  So where do you go?

 

Changing gear:

 

If you want to get your book published, you have to change gear… literally. You have to hang up your writer’s cap and put on a deerstalker. You have to change your mind set from John Gardner become Sherlock Holmes. Finding a publisher is not hard. But it is time consuming. You will have to put in the same kind of effort researching the potential publishers as you did preparing each and every chapter and plot twist.

 

The first place you need to go is to your favorite book store – Brentano’s, Barns & Noble, Borders whatever it’s called in your area. You are on a quest. You need to look for books that have the same theme that yours does. Have you written a SciFi fantasy set in a galaxy far, far away?  Have you written a mystery set deep in the New England woods?  Have you written a memoire based on family diaries from the last 100 years?  Whatever your subject matter, the book store has a section of like-minded books.

 

Find them.  Look through them. You are looking for three things:  first, the name of the publisher; second, the name of the editor; and third, the name of the agent who represented the book.

 

You will find the publisher’s name and address on the title page.  Write it down.   Then look for the ACKNOWLEDGMENTS page. It will either be in the front or the back of the book. Read the acknowledgments carefully. Some authors like to thank both their editors and their agents.  (Just think of the speeches at the Oscars.)  When you find those names, write them down and save them.  Here is the reason why:

 

The Truth about Publishers and Editors:

 

Publishers have niches. What you are looking for is the publisher whose niche fits your book. Publishing houses are creatures of habit. Their editors are employees of habit. An editor keeps his job based on how well the books he purchases do in the marketplace. If he buys a book that doesn’t sell, his job is in jeopardy. Too many bad sellers and he loses his job. Because of this, editors tend to be very conservative people. They like their jobs and want to keep them. Editors will very rarely stray from the niche that has made them money. The bottom line won’t let them. If an editor/publishing house specializes in Romance novels, they are more than likely willing to look at another romance novel than they are a book about how the Irish were marginalized in South Boston in the early 1900s.

 

When your list, go to the Library and hunt up the WRITER’S MARKET®.  It will be in the Reference Section, Dewey Decimal number REF 051 W. 

 

Virtually all publishers have a listing in the WRITER’S MARKET®. Look up the ones you have earmarked for your book. The listings in the WRITER’S MARKET® will include the publisher’s address, telephone numbers, website (if they have one, and most do), instructions on how to get in touch with them, and how long it will take them to respond to your query.

 

Look at exactly how they want to see a manuscript presented. Look at the name of the person they want you to send your manuscript to. Is it the same name that the other author thanked on his or her acknowledgment page?

 

The reason you want the publisher’s phone number is because you are going to call to see if that person is still there. If not, you will have to find out who has taken his or her place. Most receptionists or secretaries will give you that information with no trouble if you ask for it in a very business-like manner:

 

Caller:  Hi, this is (your name).  Is (editor’s name) still the Western editor?

Secretary:  Yes, she/he is.

Caller:  Thank you.  [Hang up.]

 

Caller:  Hello.  Is (editor’s name) still the Mystery editor?

Secretary:  No she’s not.

Caller:  Who’s replaced her?

Secretary:  May I ask what this is for?

Caller:  I’m just up-dating my contact file.

Secretary:  She’s been replaced by (name of new editor.)

Caller: Thank you. [Hang up.]

 

Now stop. Take a deep breath. Here’s the step that no one tells you about. Don’t send your book to them… at least not until they ask to see it. If you send it to them blind, it goes into something called a “slush pile”. You are thrown in with every Tom, Dick and Harry that has sent them something. Getting something published from the “slush pile” is next to impossible.

 

What you need to do now is to sit down and write the editor a letter, a one page letter, selling yourself and your book.  Really selling YOURSELF.  In reality, YOU are more important than your book.

 

Editors are bottom line creatures of habit. They will only buy books that they think will make them money. And the less work they or the publishing house has to do, the more money they make. When you go to the book store, look around. What do you really notice? THERE ARE NO BEST SELLING BOOKS; ONLY BEST SELLING AUTHORS.

 

This is the age of the cult of personality. Nora Roberts. Danielle Steele. Stephen King.  How much effort are you willing to put into marketing your own book? To whom will you market your book?  How will you get the message out to them?  That’s what your letter to the editor is all about.

 

You open the letter with a short line or two about your book. Then you hit them with how much you are willing to do and can do to get the book marketed: Lecture tours; postings on Facebook, Twitter and other Social Networks; calling and going on radio shows; going to seminars; making yourself available as a panelist for book events. You have to show them (in one page) how they are going to make money off of you and your book. If the editor likes what he or she reads, THEN they will ask to see a sample of you book or perhaps the whole thing. That’s when you mail it to them and you mail it to them exactly as they have described in the WRITER’S MARKET®. You mail it to them ONLY when they ask to see it and ONLY when you have someone specific to mail it to.

 

When you send your book to them, write “as requested” on the outside of the package. That’s like saying “personal” on a letter. The editor’s secretary will steer your manuscript directly to the editor’s desk and not to the slush pile. Never send anything to an editor marked “as requested” if he or she hasn’t requested it. Your relationship with that editor must be one that’s built on trust. If the editor feels he or she can’t trust you. Your book is dead in the water.

 

More than likely, you will hear the dreaded words, “We only look at manuscripts submitted by reputable agents” or maybe you read in the WRITER’S MARKET®, Agented submissions only. Never fear.  If you don’t have an agent, get one.  Many people will tell you how hard that is.  However, getting an agent is very much like finding that publisher.

 

The Truth about Agents:

 

An agent makes his money off of the sale of a book (between 10% to 15%). But agents can’t work with everybody that comes through their doors. This is why when you ask a writer who his agent is, you will most likely get a run-around. Writers guard the identity of their agents for a very good reason. They are afraid of losing them.

 

Like the publisher/editor, the agent is also a bottom-line creature. He makes his money only if his writers make money. Should an agent run across a writer that he thinks will make him more money than one of the writers already in his stable, the agent will dump that old writer faster than…

 

Remember when you originally looked through the books and you wrote down the names of the editors and agents whom the authors thanked? Agents are also listed in the WRITER’S MARKET® as well as several other literary directories and on the internet. 

 

Look up the agent.  Get the address, phone numbers, and especially the fax number. Now, you have to write a one page letter in the same vein as the letter you wrote to the publisher. In this case, you have to convince the agent that he will make more money out of you than he would with one of his current writers. Then fax it to him.

 

Direct mail marketers know that if you send someone a letter, it can sit around on their desks or in a drawer or in a file. It may take weeks for them to get back to you. However, faxes demand attention and demand to be answered A.S.A.P.  Send your letter by fax. If the agent thinks that he will be able to make money off of you, he will ask to see your book. You stand a better chance of getting published if an agent takes your book to a publisher that if you take it directly.

 

Editors trust good agents. If in your research you found that Agent M sold a book to Publisher Y through Editor S, then you already know that Editor S will be willing to look at any similarly thematic book Agent M sends to him. If you can convince Agent M that you will be a welcome addition to his stable of writers, he will work hard to sell your book. If Editor S knows that Agent M sends him good material, he will be more than willing to go to bat for a project that he thinks will make the publishing house a profit. You, as the author, have to take advantage of this kind of symbiotic relationship when you find it.

 

You may have to contact more than one agent.  You may have to rewrite your letter until you find the right combination of selling points that pique an agent’s or an editor’s interest.  The thing to remember is not to give up.  James A. Mitchner’s best selling book HAWAII was rejected 25 times before it was accepted for publication.  Believe in yourself.