Publishing a book: Is it really that hard? Help me out!  

i agree. Being persistent is also a way to finally get though. The really great writers today started their writing careers by publishing small articles in periodicals and not the book they have brought out as New York Best Seller.
So start small, but dream big, and be persistent.

Hey, thanks for your response. Yeah, I think I'm going to go with the e-book idea and I'll see if I can publish them later when I finally have the money and time to do so.

But for now, I'm enjoying MyLot. So many things you can do in this site...it is amazing!

And you get paid too?

Wow!

Thanks anyway :)

welcome. Yep, mylot is pretty much a lot of fun. Enjoy yourself. happy mylotting.

I have to disagree strongly with Cambiste. Publishers can - and do - afford to pay for promotion (and many other things) if they consider something worth publishing. Many thousands of books are published every year with NO cost (and often some profit) to the author.

There are, of course, plenty of publishers who are eager to take your money but they will not promote it nearly as eagerly as they would if it were something they had chosen to publish (in fact, many will not promote it at all - all they are interested in is making a profit out of charging the author to have it printed).

Getting a first novel published may take years and many, many rejection slips but it should NEVER cost the author anything more than time, persistence and angst!

Small publishers will not want to take responsibility of your book's success. Making copies available in your nearest bookstore cannot be done even if they think the book is really good. Which is also why many good books never appear in the bookstores, but medium-quality books often appear everywhere.

Well, i don't really have experience with this, and i too had been told that publishing good books doesn't cost much, and your books are rejected time and again by different publishers; but what you see in reality seems to against this.

Wow, thanks for all the great info!
I'll take all of it into account.
Also, I was thinking of Lulu, but I read somewhere that it isn't a nice site.
Have you used it before? Some say once your book is in their hands, they do whatever they want with it. Is this true? I'm not really sure if I could trust them. Anyway, thanks again.

I think that Lulu is a very reputable site. Their Terms state that you retain copyright in any material you upload but you "grant Lulu the nonexclusive right to provide a service to post, display, copy, and sell that Content within the limitations you set during the online publishing process." (in other words, you are in control of how it is used). You do agree that Lulu may make 'minor alterations' to your copy for the purposes of publication. This will, I think, be very small changes such as, for example, dealing with 'widows' and 'orphans' (where a single word or line of a paragraph carries over to the next page).

Take time to read the Terms carefully: http://www.lulu.com/about/member_agreement.php

You can either format your book exactly as you want it or you can ask Lulu to format it for printing, in which case they will use a professional book designer to make it look as good as any commercial product. Naturally, there is a charge for that. If you want to format it yourself, the best way to do this is by using the Adobe PDF format. Take note of the standard page sizes that Lulu recommend and make sure that everything is in order (page size, margins, gutter, placing of grahics, &c) before you send it. If you want Lulu to help with the formatting, the best medium to send it in would be MS Word .doc format (or Rich Text Format if you don't use Word or a program that can save as a Word .doc).

Don't forget the cover/jacket and the spine! It has been said "Never judge a book by its cover." but the fact is that most people do ... at least, that single fraction-of-a-second glance is all important in deciding whether a customer will pick a book off the shelf or leave it!

Lulu provide templates for all the sizes of publications they produce and you should download and use them: http://www.lulu.com/uk/publish/books/?cid=nav_bks and DO study plenty of book designs in your local bookstore. Ask yourself what makes YOU want to pick up a book!

The only thing I would say about Whitmore Publishing is that their website has NO Terms & Conditions and very little advice on what they accept or do not accept. They only say that they are a 'trade imprint and do not require an investment by the author into publication of the author's work. If your work is found to be acceptable for publication by our company we will respond with a formal offer and a publishing contract.' in other words, they don't guarantee to publish your work (but then no publisher could say that - even Lulu has restrictions on what they can accept!)

I am always suspicious of companies that advertise for submissions: all reputable publishers get far too many manuscripts to ever need to do that!