Navigating Publishing Options

I had scant knowledge of the book publishing industry when I wrote Bryony. Until then, I figured you either mailed a manuscript to a publisher and crossed your fingers or paid a vanity press thousands of dollars for a badly edited and bound book.

So, before I became part of the mix, I consulted an updated Writer's Digest and took a ride on the web to find out exactly what that mix was. Along the way, I found other useful resources: Writer Beware, Absolute Write Water Cooler and Preditors and Editors. I learned the difference among then unfamiliar terms: self-publishing, POD, independent press, and vanity press. I studied how "traditional" publishing worked, how to recognize those sites that billed themselves as traditional publishers when they really were fee-paying sites in disguise.

These were my choices:

* Find agent representation who would then try to sell the manuscript to a publishing house, hopefully a large one. Most major publishing houses refuse to look at a manuscript unless submitted by an agent.

* Submit to a small, independent press.

* Pay a company to edit and pubish the book and (possibly) buy the company's add-on marketing services (although I had seen few successful titles with these companies, leading me those marketing services were not valuable).

* Truly self-publish, which meant overseeing the entire project from start to finish (from formatting to design, to editing, to locating a printer, and playing marketer, etc.), a daunting prospect for me.

* Use a cooperative press (the publisher pays some; I pay some).

Tomorrow: The pros and cons of the above for Bryony.