Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Getting published

     Occasionally I'm contacted by aspiring authors asking what it takes to get published and how the publishing business works. The short answer is that writing a book is an enjoyable exercise if you love to write, but that getting published and successfully selling a book can be pretty painful even under the best of circumstances. Though, I suppose, selling 50,000 copies would dull the ache!
     The rules of the publishing game have changed thanks to Amazon. I recently read that no one really knows how to sell books anymore. For example, when Borders, the second largest book store chain in the U.S., went out of business, normally Barnes and Noble, the largest chain, would have benefitted. But it didn't. Amazon did. Nowadays, the strategy seems to be for publishers to mainly focus on the potential 'mega block busters' hoping for a  million-book bestseller. Most of the rest of the books are left to scramble for themselves and authors must do a lot of their own promoting. Thankfully there is Facebook and internet websites!

Exactly one month from today A Thousand Suns hits the bookshelves and approximately 100 internet web sites around the world - including Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
    
Best regards,

Jim
Zurich

No comments: