looking for publishing company

[manjety.livejournal.com]

Dear neighbours, I need your advice.

I am looking for a publishing company to help my friend print his book (fiction).
Could you recommend me some reliable place or people who can tell me how to do it [publis]?

If you have some publishing experience, could you share it with me?
What should I know before giving the book out them?
Does each publisher give you copy rights?
How much it might cost me?

Any information would be very appreciated!

thank you!
Katerina

Comments

[modpixie.livejournal.com]

if your friend is only looking to print his book, there are some good places on line that do printing -- stuff along the lines of cafe press. he could then hire a publicist and get the word out there grassroots style...

thank you

[manjety.livejournal.com]

does it worth of hiring a publicist? what is his/her role in the publishing-going live process?

Could you recommend me some online printing companies.

I googled and found soooooooo many different companies! I just don't know where to start adn how to filter them.

[st-darwin.livejournal.com]

If you mean getting published, Neil Gaiman posted a collection of articles and links (http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/01/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about.asp) on publishing and getting published. In particular, Sillybean's Publishing 101 (http://www.sillybean.net/article/510/writing-and-publishing-101) looks good.

There are scam publishers and agents out there; I wouldn't recommend the publisher of Atlanta Nights (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006032.html#006032).

[manjety.livejournal.com]

the list of topics from the sillybean page looks great! A good place to start :)

thank you!

[jadelennox]

The best resource around to prevent your friend from getting screwed is the SFWA's Writer Beware site. Read it. Read it all.

There are plenty of vanity presses out there in these days of print on demand but I assume that's not what your friend wants.

The first step is to find publishers that print similar books to your friend's. Go to their websites, find out if they accept unsolicited manuscripts. Few do.

If your friend gets an agent then he or she must read the writer beware page; many of the agents are scam artists.

Just a few suggestions...

[cybermonk.livejournal.com]

...based on my friend John's experience of self-publishing two novels (one of them I designed the cover for).

He decided to "go big" and have a large batch of books printed (several thousand as I recall) of eahc book. While you do get the economies of scale for larger batch orders, he has had a huge pain in storing them. For a while he was paying for a u-store it place to hold the books in San Francisco (long story about how his load of books ended up there) to hold them.

My advice would be to find a printer that's amenable to doing small batches of books, at least at first. There are places out there that can do "on demand" printing, which my friend was looking into, but they have the tradeoff of a higher cost per book. He was also interested in supporting local printers. I think he had his done at a printshop near where he lives on the Vinyard.

Also, when finding a printer, be very careful to read the fine print. There are horror stories of people essentially signing away the rights to their book to a "printer" who slipped some really nasty terms into the printing contract.

He's also put a huge effort into promoting the book. He's sent copies to all of the "traditional" book review places for his genre (scifi/technothriller), but also less traditional reviewers. The biggest influx of orders he's seen was when Slashdot review his first novel a few years back. He also makes apperances at events (Geek Pride, Arisia, etc.).

It's a lot of work. But it's paid off. He's just gotten a book deal with A Major Publisher (which may or may not eventually be your friend's goal... but given John has a family to look after, having a publisher worry about printing, marketing, etc. is a definite plus).

Good luck!