Want to avoid the slush-pile and give your book the head-start it deserves? Top publishers and literary agents are receiving up to 1000 manuscripts per week. They reject around 95% of these without so much as reading them.So you need to do everything possible to avoid costly mistakes when submitting your work.

Poor Layout and Presentation

Publishers don’t want single-spaced pages in 10 point typeface. They don’t want fancy fonts or coloured paper. You may think it will grab their attention. It will, but for all the wrong reasons.

Use double-spacing and 12 point typeface. Number your pages and include a word count. Put your book title at the top of every page. This will ensure your manuscript looks professional and businesslike.

Failing To Research Your Market

Do a couple of days’ research before sending out your book. Who are the best agents and publishers to send it to? Who is likely to be most receptive?

It’s no good haphazardly sending to every agent listed in The Writer’s Handbook or The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook. You need to make your targets as precise as possible.

Sending Out Work Before It’s Ready

If you send your book out before it’s ready, you’ll end up doing yourself more harm than good.

Make sure someone with a credible reputation has read your manuscript before you post it. If possible, get professional endorsement. This means finding a reputable author or editor to read your book. You can then use their comments as part of your pitch.

Getting Bogged Down By Small Detail

Often when writers revise their books, they focus on deleting sentences or tweaking paragraphs. They change colons to hyphens, and full-stops to commas. They get swamped in the small detail.

When revising your manuscript, remember the bigger picture. Ask yourself: is there enough drama or intrigue? Are there enough challenges, conflicts or questions? Are your chapters logically structured? Do you open your book with a bang rather than a whimper?

Pestering

There’s a fine line between pestering and perseverance. Writers sometimes forget that agents are giving their services for free up until the moment that a book is sold. This means they’re covering the considerable costs for staff, time and paperwork, with their own money. This is a tremendous privilege, not an automatic right.

Making a nuisance of yourself by hassling agents – or publishers – is unlikely to result in anything positive. No matter how frustrated you feel, make sure you’re always pleasant and polite.

It can be overwhelming when you first start sending out your book to agents and publishers. As with any new skill, it takes practice and repetition before you get it right.

Remember that few dreams are achieved without massive action. By reading this report, you’ve already taken the first step towards writing a professional pitch.

Increasingly, agents and publishers are asking authors to help with the marketing of their books.

Many writers are taken by surprise when they receive a request for a “detailed marketing plan” – often before an agent has even taken them on.

Don’t be daunted. Treat this as an opportunity rather than a hurdle. Many successful authors draw up a marketing plan before they even start work on their book.

Your Marketing Plan requires research and creative energy – skills you already possess in abundance!

To get started, list your Marketing Plan under the following headings:

Book Category:

What genre/s does your book fall under? Choose books similar to yours at Amazon and see which category they are listed under.

Sub Categories:

What are its sub-categories? Again, use Amazon for this.

Market Summary:

Provide a convincing argument that there is room for a new entrant in the market.
If you can, obtain sales figures for your particular genre or subject area. (eg. 10 million romance novels were sold in the UK last year).

Is there a book similar to yours that has sold well? (eg. My book is aimed at the same market as xxx by yyy which sold zzz copies last year). Often, you can find this information using Google, as well as authors’ and publishers’ websites.

Closest competitors:

List your ‘competitors’ (in terms of content, focus & title) giving title, author, publisher, year, price.

Unique selling points:

Identify what is unique and different about your book.

In Part 2, I’ll show you how to add more detail to your marketing plan. Don’t be daunted. Break down the plan into simple steps and you’ll find it much easier than you expected.

Here are 3 powerful ways to do this:

1. Ask the person

This is quite a bold approach that can be very effective. In response to someone raising a price concern, you reply:

“Mr Jones we never offer the lowest price in the market. Why do you think that even though we aren’t the lowest priced provider that so many people buy from us?”

The person will then usually reply along the lines of quality, service and so forth. Whatever the person offers as the reason, you respond:

“Mr Jones, you are exactly right and…” and then you can add in any additional reasons that are appropriate and move into re-selling the benefits of your high quality, service etc as described above.

2. Talk the difference

In response to someone telling you that, “You’ll have to do better than that, XYZ offered a similar product me a much lower price!” a method to pursue is:

“Can I ask you how much cheaper?”

On many occasions the person will tell you the price (or perhaps an even lower price than they really have been offered as a negotiation ploy!) and you can work out the difference between the two prices.

Then sell the benefits that the person gets for the difference:

“Mrs Jones, the difference is only £400. For that investment you get…” and sell the benefits that your product and service offers over and above the competitor.

3. John Ruskin

John Ruskin was a prolific writer in the 19th century. I have two of his quotes printed onto cards that I sometimes show to people when they are attempting to haggle over price. The quotations are:

“It is unwise to pay too much, but it is unwise to pay too little. When you pay too much you lose a little money and that is all, but when you pay too little you sometimes lose everything, because the thing that you’ve bought isn’t capable of doing the thing it was bought to do.

The common law of business prohibits you from paying a little and receiving a lot – it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder it would be as well to add something for the risk you run, and if you can do that you can afford to buy something better”.

“There is hardly anything in the world today that some man cannot make just a little worse and sell just a little cheaper, and the people who buy on price alone are this man’s lawful prey”.

John Ruskin, English art and social critic, 1819 – 1900

Mr Ruskin (God bless him!) has overcome many a price concern with his wise words. Not many people are comfortable with being someone’s “lawful prey”!

1. The instant reverse

This very bold (and somewhat cheeky) technique often shocks the other person and overcomes their price concerns. Here is how it works:

John: “That’s expensive!”

You: “John, that is exactly the reason you should take it!”

John will usually look a little shocked and confused at this stage and you continue with anything that sounds logical! E.g

“John, you want the best value at the best price, don’t you? Well you’ll never get a better chance than today!”

2. The trim

With this technique you commence lowering the specification of your product and service to meet the person’s price concern.

“OK Jane , it looks as if I am going to have to trim the specification to meet your price requirement. What aspects of the proposal could you do without?”

The thought of having to lose some of the benefits of your product or service is often enough for a customer to re-think their price concern!

3. The add to

Sometimes the person wants to think they have got a better deal than the average individual (a great opportunity to stroke their ego), and adding something to “sweeten the deal” can satisfy this desire. This does not have to be expensive. Think about what you can offer that has a perceived high value to people but a low actual cost to you.

4. Scratched record

This technique is named after the tendency of the old fashioned vinyl records to jump when the playing surface was scratched and repeat the same part of the song again and again.

With the scratched record technique you just firmly and politely keep repeating your price position and the reason behind it in slightly different ways e.g.

“The price is because the specification meets your needs exactly”

“In order to give you what you really need we need to supply the specification that costs X price”

“I appreciate your point John however this price guarantees our ability to give you the specification that’s right for what you need”

With firmness and persistence you will be able to wear down many price concerns in this way.

The legendary bookseller, E. Haldeman-Julius was one of the biggest publishing sensations of all time. He sold over a 100 million books during the 1920s – which is an eye-watering amount of sales by anyone’s standards.

In all, he published around 2,000 titles as part of a series called Little Blue Books. What’s particularly interesting is that all the books were packaged in a similar way. They all had blue covers and there was little to distinguish them.

No sales copy was used to promote them. This meant that buyers’ decisions were based mainly on the titles.

Thankfully for us, Haldeman-Julius kept detailed records of all his book sales. There’s a lot we can learn from his records:

• How to Improve Your Conversation sold 77,000 copies, while The Romance of Words appealed to just 10,500 readers.
• The Art of Kissing sold 60,500 copies, whereas The Art of Courtship sold 17,500.
• Modern Aspects of Birth Control sold 73,000 copies. Debate on Birth Control sold only 27,000.
• How to Psycho Analyse Yourself sold 29,000 copies, whereas How I Psycho Analysed Myself sold only 13,500 copies.

From these non-fiction titles, we can see that specifics such as ‘kissing’ win out over broader generic terms such as ‘courtship’.

Readers respond well to ‘how to…’ messages which tell them exactly what they will learn.

They also get hooked in by use of the second-person (you, yourself). This is the WIFM (What’s In It For Me?”) principle at work.

Formal words like ‘debate’ have a lesser appeal than more ordinary words and phrases.

Without doubt, there will be other factors at work such as the readership targeted and the customer database. However, there can be little doubt that a title is your number one tool for getting people to buy your book.

Getting a celebrity endorsement for your book is one of the easiest ways to promote it.

Readers are much more likely to listen to a well-known expert or media personality saying they can’t put your book down. Not only this but a little ‘celebrity’ magic tends to rub off on you.

I’m not saying that you should write to every celebrity or expert you can think of willy-nilly. However, if there is a tie-in with your book, however tenuous, then go for it.

Many authors are reluctant to approach celebrities for testimonials. Don’t make the same mistake!

Celebrities have egos the same as everyone else. And if your book is getting publicity and media attention, this is also going to benefit them.

You may have to approach 100, even 500, celebrities. But you only need ONE to make a massive difference to your book sales. Does it really matter if 499 tell you to get lost, if you get the one testimonial you’re after? What do you stand to lose? Hurt pride and the time it took to write the letter or email!

It’s never been easier to access celebrities via the Internet. Not only can you use search engines like Google to track them down. Many of them also have Facebook and Twitter accounts. Make it easy for them by writing 5 of your own testimonials. When you contact them, point out that they can choose one of your templates if they wish. Anything that saves them time or having to wade through loads of material, will persuade them of your professionalism.

If you’re feeling daunted, then focus on the positive benefits for you and your book. Quotes will boost your book sales and credibility. And think how great you’ll feel when you see those endorsements printed on your book cover.

Our suggestion is that you err on the side of caution and remove things that can cause problems, work round them with some creative thinking or, even better, don’t add them in the first place. Things to consider:

1. Images – plain text books work best for ebook conversion, so for us non-fiction publishers where a picture can replace a thousand words, we have the task of ensuring the images are included correctly.
2. Headings – if you use styles / stylesheets correctly when designing your book then headings will not pose a problem, but will actually assist you in the conversion process.
3. Tables – will often format badly in the ebook standards, best to change to lists.
4. Page numbers & references – often in a manuscript you will see, “see page 16″, this does not work well in ebooks as page 16 could be 14 or 18 depending upon the ereader used, the zoom and the format rendered. Remove all page references.
5. Footnotes & endnotes – some formats handle these really well, others don’t. Add them into the text if possible.

In fact the only ebook format that will ensure the reader has a chance of seeing what you intended is the PDF, but this has its own issues.

So, what’s the process? What follows is our process for turning our Word documents into files that can be converted into all the e-book formats. This isn’t the only way, and I’m sure there are cleverer people who have managed to do this easier or faster, but this works for us, and is a good place to start.

Step 1 – Tidy Up

Your first task is to get the document into its most simple format, whilst retaining the layout you like!

We use Open Office as it produces a file that is slightly less problematic for ebook conversion. You can continue to use Microsoft Word if you want. First:

• Remove tables.
• Remove non-essential images.
• Remove Table Of Contents (especially page numbers).
• Ensure all headings are formatted as a style – H1, H2 etc.
• Remove boxes, unusual formatting, odd fonts.

Then save your document as an Open Office format – mybook.ODT

Step 2 – Install A Conversion Program & Create Docs

There are commercial conversion programs out there, but we like to use Open Source, both from a philosophical perspective and a money saving one!

The Calibre ebook management system is a good starting point. The software is updated frequently, so look out for updates.

Once downloaded and installed play around with it a little. In essence, you add an Open Office (or Word) document, then configure the settings for your document, then produce ebooks in the format you choose (Epub, LIT, MOBI, etc).

Settings to look at:

• Table of contents – you need the conversion program to do this for you to be sure you have a clickable TOC, that doesn’t have page numbers.
• Make sure all your metadata is included – the title, author, keywords etc will help your book be found on ebook sites, and make the ebook owning experience better for the reader.
• Add your cover.
• Go through each screen in the conversion process and make sure you have selected the correct settings for you.

Step 3 – Test & Refine

The great thing about the Caliber software is that it includes an emulator, so after you’ve created your ebook you can see what it should look like when real readers read it on their gadget!

Check for:

• Clickable table of contents.
• Images don’t sit on text.
• Headings look correct.
• End/Start links work.
• The title and cover image are correct.

If anything looks wrong, go back to your original document and double check. Fix the problem and re-create the ebook.

If all this just seems too difficult (and believe me it’s not much fun!), then outsource it!

The Right Way: How Wealthy Authors Do Get Wealthy & Why You Don’t Even Need To Sell Millions of Books To Be One Too

Now, here’s how a wealthy author’s Money Funnel will look…

You’ll notice that as your fans want more of you (including your personal time and attention) the price goes up and the number of people who are willing and able to spend money on it will go down. This means that you can maximise profit and minimise your exposure to delivering time-intensive services by valuing (and pricing) your own time very highly.

The net result of setting things up like this is that you become both rich in cash and rich in time! True wealthy by anyone’s definition.

If you’ve enjoyed this article and want to learn more about the specific kinds of products and services you should offer I recommend you watch these videos from Simon Hazeldine…

A Better Way: How Average Authors Try To Get Wealthy & Why They Still Need The Day Job

So, here’s how most authors try to make their living (and why most authors aren’t wealthy authors)…

Unless you sell loads of books, write loads of books or get lucky with film rights etc. then you’re likely to still need the day job to make ends meet! But as you’ll soon realise – the money isn’t in the books it’s in the relationship – and specifically from selling back end products and services while using your book as a low-cost but profitable lead (and fan) building tool!

In this example, the author’s only high value item requires you to sell your time for cash – which can only result into a 1:1 input to reward ratio. The gaping hole – where medium priced products that would enable you to get paid multiple times for a single effort should be – is also dangerous because prospects have to make a bigger leap from ‘buying your book’ to ‘paying for your services’ which will mean fewer conversions.

It’s easier if they can work their way up to your higher value stuff in easy steps.

Next well see how a wealthy author stacks things up…