How Publish Your Work
To know how publish your work, the first thing you have to keep in mind is that, unless you are already famous or have enough money, it will be difficult for you to achieve it. And if you do, it will also be very difficult to have an impact.
You must start from the concept that a regular publisher pays the author for having the rights to one of his works for a certain time. Publishing it involves a significant investment of media and money, which is why publishers try to make the right choice in the works they publish.
In our country around 75,000 titles are published annually and not too many of them become well known. To publish this number of titles, publishers draw on the work of established writers and works that have been successful in their countries of origin. Only a small part of the titles correspond to novice writers.
If we add to this the huge number of titles – it is estimated that it can be close to a million – that they receive so that they can see them in case they are of interest to them, it will help you understand how difficult it is for them to take into consideration the work you send them.
In fact – and that’s a personal opinion – we doubt that they can even read them all. For this reason, special emphasis must be placed on submitting well-corrected, correctly structured and coherent work in the sequence of the plot.
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?
Once the work is perfectly reviewed, before starting to offer it, it is essential to register it in the Intellectual Property Registry.
Bearing in mind the above, it is essential not to work at random. It is useless to send a work indiscriminately to any publisher from which the data is found.
The first thing will be to know if they accept works, the second – and that is very important – what type of works they publish and if the one offered is within this line.
It is necessary to find out if the complete work or only a fragment should be sent. In fact, many publishers prefer to receive only a synopsis, the author’s information, a brief resume of their professional activity that also includes the titles of previously published works, if any.
It is also wise to present an editorial proposal where it will be specified what specific audience the work is aimed at, what age range and what genre it corresponds to. All this must be accompanied by a cover letter.
HOW SHOULD SEND YOUR WORK TO SEE IF THEY WANT TO PUBLISH IT?
It is essential to find out in what form it should be sent. Nowadays, many publishers prefer the digitized sending of the work and the documentation by email. It is not wise to send it by post without being sure that this is the medium they prefer, since otherwise, in many cases, it will be discarded.
There are, in addition to managing directly with publishers, other formulas to publicize your work.
They are as follows:
- Find a literary agent, to make an assessment of your work and if he finds possibilities and is interested in representing you, let him or her take care of connecting with the appropriate publisher. Of course, that a literary agent accepts it does not necessarily mean that a publisher is interested in publishing it. Although it is also true that there are many more possibilities than if you do it directly.
- Submit it to literary competitions. There are a large number of literary contests that can be called by publishers, cultural centers and entities of various kinds. If your work wins, it will be published under the conditions indicated in the bases. Also if it is among the finalists it has a good chance of being one. It is important to send it only to those contests in which your work meets the required requirements.
- Ask for government grants to publish. Although they are difficult to obtain, there are subsidies sponsored by the Ministry of Culture or its regional equivalents. It is a matter of finding out if there is one in which your profile can be included. In many cases, the subsidy will help to contribute to the publication costs, but it will not help to guarantee the distribution of the work in bookstores.
- Self-publish, coediting or edition on request. If you are tired of waiting and want to see your work published, these options may be useful. There are payment options and also free or shared such as co-publishing.
WHAT IS EACH THING?
SELF-PUBLISHING
It means that the publication of your work will be up to you. You can choose to publish in electronic or paper format. There are publishers that will charge you all the expenses in advance and other platforms like Amazon that are free, but in which it will be you who will have to take care of the correction, layout and design of the cover.
If you do it by paying a publisher, they will charge you based on the number of copies you want to print. Be careful, that they print them, it does NOT necessarily mean that they distribute them to bookstores, even if they tell you. Most of them give them to two or three points of sale with which they have agreements and they are usually not important centers. Find out and ask that the points of sale where the book will be recorded in the contract. Remember that in most cases you will not get the investment back.
- In both electronic and paper versions, our recommendation is that you experiment with free platforms. If you need it, we offer you some services so that your work reaches the readers in the best possible conditions.
COEDITING
Co-publishing is a possibility that some publishers offer new writers. If they are honest they will bear half of the editing costs. They will keep half of the published copies and distribute them. The other half will be given to you so that you can do what you want with them or if you wish, they will also distribute them, but keep in mind that they will first sell the ones that belong to them. In some cases, we have been told – we do not know if it is true – that some publishers only publish those that they must deliver to the writer.
EDITION ON REQUEST
There are a good number of publishers that offer this service. It is useful for those who want to make small runs dedicated to a certain area, such as students, friends, associates, etc. It is similar to desktop publishing, but with the difference that it will always be paid. Giving the appropriate final quality to the work will be up to the publisher.
WE RECOMMEND THAT:
Remember, above all, that together with the reader, the author is an essential part of the work, since he is the one who creates the content. The only real problem is how to reach the reader and this, if you do it on your own, is really difficult. You will only have your determination, effort and patience.
Therefore, the ideal and advisable thing to do is to try to get your work published by a conventional publisher, in other words, one of those who pay the writer for their work.
To do this, you must follow the recommendations that we have indicated, contact publishers, find a literary agent, submit your work to competitions, etc.
You can do all this by following each of the steps in a staggered manner or at the same time. Organize your work correctly, set priorities and arm yourself with patience. It will be a long and not very rewarding process but sometimes, although few, it is achieved.
WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO?
If time passes and you have tired of waiting or refusals and you keep thinking about trying to get the most out of your work, self-publish it, either in an eBook or on paper and better still in both possibilities.
In this case, the smartest thing is to bet on a global distribution platform such as Amazon. Once you have included it, you must undertake a campaign to promote your work, using the tools that these distributors offer for this purpose and those that you can contribute (social networks, literary forums, or payment options such as advertisements in the media) .
If you decide to self-publish on a free platform or look for a commissioned publisher, in addition to looking very carefully at the conditions and prices, remember that once your work is published, it will be materially impossible to continue trying to get it published, to move it a literary agent and you will not be able to present it to contests.