On finding a publisher....

I've been asked a lot in the last few years about how I went about finding a
good, reputable, and reliable publisher. 

In the next couple of posts here, I'm going to write a little about that most
important quest, the pluses, the minuses and some things one should watch out
for.

You may yourself might be thinking about putting something out in book form,
either in hard copy, or in an electronic edition.  The publishing business has
changed so much in the last five years, it is almost unrecognizable from what
it used to be. Today, almost anyone can self-publish. That is... once you have
a manuscript written, you can have it fine-tuned, edited and organized into a
form that can meet a lot of publishing thresholds.

Five years ago, self publishing was pretty much a dream...but today.. it is the
path that most writers follow. The main publishing houses I found out years
ago are almost impossible to talk to. Unless you are Steven King, or James
Patterson or the like... the major publishers rarely even return a phone call.
And the ones that do will shock you with what they want up front, just to
even take a look at what you've written. 

I almost fainted away when one publisher in Philadelphia told me he would
really like to publish Undertakings of an Undertaker for me, but he would have
to have $8,500 up front before he could do much. After I resumed some normal
breathing, I told him that I would look around a little bit, but thanked him for
his offer. 
I also had a similar discussion with a fellow in the big apple who actually
quoted me $2,000 more than the first fellow! Well, by now, I was getting a
bit discouraged, but didn't give up.

Then I started looking at the self-publish mode. With self publishing, you do
most of the work ahead of time. You write, find an editor, do the arranging,
front and back covers, forward, etc. etc. There are at least a dozen self
publishing companies that will put your work out on the web for sometimes
just a couple hundred dollars or less.

So I started looking at small publishing companies. Those that are out to help
the first time writer like myself. And after interviewing a few, and comparing
prices, I decided to go with Book Stand Publishing of California. They've
done a great job for me. They helped me market...and still do that on their
website, list it for me on Amazon, B & Noble, etc...take care of filling the orders,
print books as they are needed...and let me know every 30 days how the book
is doing. I've been most pleased. Roughly I'd say I spent a fifth or less than
what the big boys wanted.

If you go to Bookstandpublishing.com, click on bookstore...you'll see my
book today is no. 2 in best sellers with them, no. 2 in product sold, and no. 1
in short stories and essays. And everyone who goes to their site sees my
book continually 'looped' on the home page. They definitely will be doing
my second book, Tales Unleashed coming up before too long.

So....have an idea for a book yourself? I'll be back here in a couple of days
to talk about how you should organize your thoughts... how to start putting
it all in order, and offer some suggestions in looking over all those
self publishing companies out there. Until then, SS.