How to publish your book in Russia - printed or electronic? How to sell a book?

Suppose you are a novice author. You have written several stories, individual chapters or even a full-fledged novel. Friends like your work. Perhaps, you even posted your texts on the Internet, and you also had readers there. And one day you wanted to become a real writer: to see your offspring printed and dressed in a beautiful cover on which your name will stand. It is likely that such a dream has warmed your heart since childhood or adolescence. Or maybe it appeared just now, when you finished your first full-fledged work, received positive feedback not only from friends, but also from strangers-and so you understood that you are able to interest the reader. Or, perhaps, studying the assortment of the bestselling department of the local bookstore, you realized: "I can do it too!" So the decision came to publish the book.

Bitter truth

Before you start, remember one important thing. It may sound sad for you, but nevertheless this is so: large, venerable publishing houses will never undertake to publish books for beginners and not known to the general public for free. No matter how talented a novice you are, or seemed to yourself, there is still no recipe "How to publish a book in Russia for free".

It is necessary to accept as the fact: publishing business is the same business as any other; There is no guaranteed profit - there is no cooperation. So if you are not yet a bestselling author, then hoping for a meeting with open arms is pointless.

We find genre and publishing house

However, no one forbids you to look for ways to publish your book in a major publishing house. Just find the one that suits you on the subject. Currently the most popular genres are:

1) fantasy;

2) women's novels;

3) detectives on Russian realities;

4) cooking;

5) children's illustrated books;

6) manuals for self-development and self-education;

7) business management;

8) esoterics;

9) mysticism;

10) pseudo-historical novels with patriotic pathos.

When planning how to publish a book in Russia, remember: the less popular is the genre in which you write, the longer it will take to find a suitable publishing house. The names and contacts you need can be found on the Internet or when studying the assortment of bookstores - you can use both methods to be faithful.

We send the manuscript

If the website publisher has a special form for authors, it must be filled in and sent. You can also find and download the plan-prospectus (basic information about the book and the author), fill it out once and then send it to all the publishers you are interested in. If you are looking for how to publish your book, this could be your chance.

To information about the author and the work must necessarily include a synopsis (short description) of your work. Usually it takes no more than two or three pages. The synopsis covers the whole work from the beginning to the end, demonstrating all the merits of the plot. It is not easy to write a good synopsis, so take this issue very seriously, read the recommendations of experienced authors.

You also need to provide a sample of your work. Do not send the entire manuscript, but only a fragment (no more than 20 pages). Consideration of each manuscript can take up to six months, so be patient, if you are looking for ways to publish your book, like publishers. However, if you manage to do this - on this expectation, unfortunately, will not end. Then you will need to wait patiently for the publication of your book, because the publisher has a marketing plan.

We participate in the competition

Literary contests for various genres are held annually. Usually they are organized by literary magazines or various funds, less often by publishing houses. Some events accept work for free, others for a small fee. Winning the contest is one of the ways, How you can publish your book.

As an example of annual competitions, you can name: Eurocon and Kvazar (works in the genre of fantasy), Written by the Pen (organized by the same-named literary portal), High Heels (prose written by women) and various events from the Russian Union of Writers.

Choose the contest that best fits your writer's genre. Carefully read the terms and accurately follow them all. Make sure that your work is original in its idea and images of characters, and also qualitative in terms of stylistics and norms of the Russian language.

The works of the contestants are judged by a jury consisting, as a rule, of recognized writers, as well as representatives of publishing houses and magazines. Finalists usually get the right to publish their work in a publishing house or a literary magazine. Therefore, participation in a literary contest is an opportunity to attract the attention of competent and influential people.

Those who write for children and adolescents

Authors of children's and adolescent literature deserve special mention.

"New Children's Book" - an annual contest from the publishing house "Rosmen" - can be your chance if you are looking for how to publish a book for children and teenagers. Perhaps, it is your work, now in obscurity lying on the computer hard drive, in the future will be able to become a laureate of the contest, be published in a well-known publishing house and get a real chance to have access to an impressive number of young readers. Do not be afraid to look for a free way, how to publish a children's book written by you.

We publish at our own expense

Perhaps you are a very active person by nature and are not used to waiting for "miracles from the sky" in the form of a generous philanthropist, a good publisher, or your victory in an accidentally tucked up literary contest. In this case, it will be useful for you to advise how to publish your book at your own expense.

For starters - an option for those who want to just see their favorite creation in the form of a full book. In this case, you can simply order in the printing house and pay out of your pocket the issue of several copies: leave one or two for yourself, hand out the rest to friends and relatives. But even such, at first glance, a simple event, how to write and publish a book, takes time. First of all, calculate how you save your money in preparing the book for printing.

Prepressing

This process involves the following steps:

• Editorial proofreading of the text (for errors and typos);
• Layout (correct registration of all spaces, intervals, paragraphs, footers and other graphic components);
• The design of the cover of the future book;
• Registration of the title page and its turnover (author, title, abstract and output data).

Of course, all these operations can be made for a corresponding fee in the printing house, but something can be done on the home computer.

On the other hand, if you want the book to look real, it makes sense to entrust the whole process to professionals. Sometimes it is advantageous to give the manuscript for pre-press processing to one publishing house, and then to print it in a different place on the finished models.

How much does the first print run cost?

So, you have prepared a model of your book, and how much money will you have to invest in the release of your first, even small, circulation? Its cost depends on the following parameters:

• How many author's sheets in the publication (1 author's sheet = 40 000 characters with spaces, meaning for your work can be seen in Word);
• What is the circulation planned for;
• What type of cover (hard or soft, in the first case it will be more beautiful and practical, but more expensive).
• Quality of paper for the text block and cover materials;
• Colorfulness of the future edition (if the cover is planned color);
• How much time-consuming prepress will be (for example, the presence of illustrations).

As for the time for publishing (including editing, design, layout and printing), on average this process takes 3 to 6 months. If desired, you can shorten the waiting time, but this will mean additional costs.

Earnings of the writer

And now - an option for those authors who plan to earn a literary craft. In general, this is true: you honestly worked, wrote, invested yourself - and your work should be paid. Another question is how specific the book market is and how to sell the book in modern conditions. After all, paradoxically, now only the lazy person does not write, and readers simply do not have enough at all.

To take the first step, you need to spin your book. Do not expect that others will do it for you - a publishing house or a literary agent - after all, as we found out at the very beginning, no one will publish and promote the little-known author for free. If you want to get a positive result, you have to do it yourself.

Sale of books

To begin with, in order to be able to sell the issued book, you need to get an international standard ISBN number. This can be done in the Russian Book Chamber. It is required to pay a certain fee for the service, as well as submit documents that give you the right to carry out publishing activities.

Now you are ready to sell the book. You can come to the bookstore and try to interest the owner to sign a contract for implementation. When assigning a cost, proceed from the fact that after a percentage of the costs (from the publisher and the store), the book will cost twice as much as its production cost. For example, if you personally issue a print run costing 150 rubles. For 1 copy, then on the shelf of the bookstore your creation will be exhibited at a price of 300 rubles. But how much in this case is the percentage of people who will buy an unknown book? Therefore, before releasing your offspring to the market, you need to make a name for yourself as an author. Next - on how to publish an e-book.

Promotion on the Internet

The easiest way is to achieve recognition for yourself and your book on the vast webs of the World Wide Web, or at least its Russian-speaking segment. There are several ways how to publish an e-book. Among them:

• An electronic book in its pure form;
• Print on demand;
• Audiobook.

To your book has become quite popular for sale, you need to draw attention to it. You can publish an e-book in various ways. One of them is the placement in digital libraries, for example: Aldebaran, Fenzin, Litpolal, FictionBook, Bookz.ru, etc. Some online libraries (Libreusek, Litters) themselves find new authors, Popular in the network, and upload their work.

However, the main profit in the distribution of the electronic version of the book is not at all financial. The more downloads, the more readers will know about your book. And the higher the chances of selling it in a paper version: you will earn yourself a name, and you will have something to offer the publisher.

There is a misconception that a person will not buy a book in paper form, which has already been downloaded electronically for free. In fact, readers are happy to buy in the home library those works that they plan to reread. The latter already depends on you as from a skilful author.

If you are looking for a way to sell an e-book, pay attention to the technology "print on demand." In this case, the site is laid out a fragment of the book (several chapters, cover, etc.), and the interested reader pays for his copy, which is specially printed for him.

One way to sell an e-book is to produce an audio version. This can be done both in the studio and at home. Distribute audiobooks more often in online stores in the form of a paid link for download. Audiobooks are in demand, but this market has not been sufficiently developed yet, so competition is less, which is a significant plus.

Once in your mind the idea was born. And you asked yourself: "And how to publish your book?" If you already have an interesting answer to this question, then you are ready to set a task - to publish. And by putting it, you can find solutions.