Publishing

I have been looking into possible publishers following the final editing. As my current one is a small company with a limited market, they recommended I look for someone with a wider market. At the recommendation of an author friend of mine to look at another publisher. I mentioned this to my current publisher, who wasn't sure at first, but then he realised his misgivings were actually a mistake because he was thinking of a completely different company. So I approached the other publishing house the other day, and heard back from them pretty quickly.

I had a very warm welcome by the "Titles Manager", she was willing to personally look at the manuscript (a thought that blew me away). It's a pretty big step, because its very hard to get anyone to look at a manuscript these days, let alone the head of a publishing division. I discovered that the company also publishes one of the magazines that I will be writing for at the end of the year. On that point, this publisher was very pleased that I was already being published by one of their companies, and I think that has given me the upper hand in bypassing a few steps.

A few days later, I heard some more from them. Looks like I will be able to bypass the traditional method of manuscript submission and go straight to the top. I don't need to go through official channels. I don't even need to send in the manuscript submission form like I normally would. Seeing as I have been in contact with the company, and will be writing for one of their magazines, we already have some common ground. I was told by the Title Manager that I can just email her a copy once it is done, and just as a courtesy I will probably send her a hard copy. She said that as we have already been in contact, she would remember our previous conversations, and there isn't really a need to send in the form. In this, it means that I am skipping a few steps in the publishing process. Normally it takes years for people to even get as far as writing the book, let alone getting somebody to look at their manuscript, and what's more, to get it published.

To get that far in publishing these days, with the amount of people sending in manuscripts, its extremely hard for anyone to get published. The publisher gets hundreds of manuscripts each year, and as a result only about 2% of the people that send manuscripts actually get published. In other companies, the situation for unpublished writers is even harder. Companies like Zondervan won't even look at an unpublished/unestablished author! You have to know somebody to even get anywhere at all! You probably have an idea how hard it is to even get anyone to look at a manuscript without going through an agent! There are so many writers out there just sending manuscripts and getting rejections left right and centre. I have already had one from Bethany House Publishers. But I wasn't worried about that one, because I knew it probably wasn't God's timing.

It is only by God's favour that I have gotten this far, and its also quite daunting to think that this time next year I could be a published author.

So far, this company appears to be exactly what I might be looking for in a publisher. I wanted somebody who was an Australian company, but with overseas connections, because those kinds of companies get much better exposure for their authors. I wanted the profits to go first of all, to an Australian company and not an overseas company. But I didn't want a company that dealt strictly with an Australian market, as that limits the potential impact of the book.

All is well. It is going suprisingly quick!