Publishing a large novel? Any tips?

sports_brah

sports_brah

sports_brah

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Somone I know wants to publish their first novel. It's a moderately large book (445,000 words) (fiction). They've done a limited run of the book so have some copies to hand.

How would they go about publishing it? Are there specific tips and tricks? From reading around, it seems luduciously competitive and difficult to get a fiction book published.

Has anyone got any experience of this? Self publishing looks interesting, but with limited family circles, I'm not sure how it would get off the ground.

Anyone with knowledge of publishers?


Thanks
 
I would suggest they investigate the digital publishing opportunities, with an eye on those that also offer printed versions on demand if they really want physical copies of their book to be available. Amazon has a very generous pricing structure (huge amount goes back to the writer) for self published books.
 
You hire a marketing or PR company. Otherwise it'll get lost in the thousands of ebooks that gey published every day.
 
The advent of self publishing has meant traditional publishing is all but impossible - hundreds of thousands of more books are now available.

Try self publishing - that's what I did with my book (95,000 words). You get less royalties of course, but distribution channels are the same - my book is on all international and UK Amazons, you can order it in at any book shop or library, full ISBN etc

Ebooks are incredibly easy to make and instantly publish on Amazon. Then just go about your own promotion and marketing.
 
tres said:
The advent of self publishing has meant traditional publishing is all but impossible - hundreds of thousands of more books are now available.

Try self publishing - that's what I did with my book (95,000 words). You get less royalties of course, but distribution channels are the same - my book is on all international and UK Amazons, you can order it in at any book shop or library, full ISBN etc

Ebooks are incredibly easy to make and instantly publish on Amazon. Then just go about your own promotion and marketing.
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Uh? Surely you get more from self publishing per copy sold, given that's the entire point of self publishing. :)
 
sports_brah said:
Somone I know wants to publish their first novel. It's a moderately large book (445,000 words) (fiction). They've done a limited run of the book so have some copies to hand.

Thanks
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Kindle Direct Pulishing (kdp.amazon.com) but be aware that there are a lot of books in the Kindle store.

Also half a million words? Ouch, how many pages does that work out at?

Also, has the work been proof read and edited? Because a work that big is going to need a lot of editing. I can tell you that mistakes make it past so a good editor is nice. There are services to do this if needs be though.

This might help http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ http://authonomy.com/

Good luck to them. Getting published isn't easy. Getting noticed even harder. I'd take this moment to link to my works (I have three eBooks and one paperback at the moment) but alas the Dons would just shoot it down.



Feek said:
Lulu.
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Yeah, I used these before Amazon picked me up in print. I used them to get in the Apple iBookStore though not in paperback form.

Now I have my own fully blown iBookstore account (after going through the months long process of getting an America tax ID)
 
sports_brah said:
Somone I know wants to publish their first novel. It's a moderately large book (445,000 words) (fiction). They've done a limited run of the book so have some copies to hand.

How would they go about publishing it? Are there specific tips and tricks? From reading around, it seems luduciously competitive and difficult to get a fiction book published.

Has anyone got any experience of this? Self publishing looks interesting, but with limited family circles, I'm not sure how it would get off the ground.

Anyone with knowledge of publishers?


Thanks
Click to expand...




That's rather a hefty word count for a first novel. The average is usually said to be about 70,000 words. Tell him to consider dividing it into volumes - the more work you have out there the better the exposure, anyway.

Personally, I'd forget traditional print avenues in favour of Print on Demand and ebook Direct Publishing. The author's control is huge, as are the royalty percentages. I have multiple publications in the ebook format and a volume about to go live via PoD.

What is his aim with this? Does he just want it published or does he want it to earn him some money?

Is it actually any good? Has it been proofread by writers or editors?
 
Is your friend hoping to make money from this, or launch a career?

If they are, with such a hefty piece of work please advise them to get it professionally proof read, if not fully edited.
 
Make sure it's heavily edited too, I'd say. There's a serious amount of rubbish out there.
 
sports_brah said:
It's a moderately large book (445,000 words)
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No, that's a huge book, not a "moderately large" one! The Lord of the Rings (all 6 books, 3 volumes) has around 560,000, to give you an idea. The largest Harry Potter book, Order of the Phoenix, is about 250,000.

General advice - if "someone you know" wants to make a career out of it, seek professional publication. If it's likely to be the one and only thing they write, stick it on Kindle and get the word of mouth going.

The above advice to get it professionally edited and proof read makes sense, but will cost (potentially a lot) if not handled by a publisher.
 
Self publishing is becoming more popular these days as authors want more control. Don't pay out any money upfront though, plenty of companies will be happy ot take your money but you don't need to. That's vanity publishing from the days when anybody could publish a book if they had the right amount of cash and then ended up selling them to their families and tripping over piles of booksin the dining rooms for the next 10 years. Lulu is good if you're confident about formatting etc. And yes, bad editing is one of the main criticisms of self publishing, although I'm seeing more and more typos in traditionally published books nowadays as their budgets are cut.
The you need a strong social media presence I think to plug it. Twitter/facebook etc, maybe a blog. It takes time ot build up but can be done.
And yes, that book is too long for a first one.
 
Best way to generate interest would be to approach the magazines that publish short stories for fiction.

Cut parts down into short stories then use them as a lead in to something larger. Patrick Rothfuss went this route iirc.
 
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