How to become a published author

By Richard Shepherd

Find out how to sell your book to a publisher from an author who has already sold to a major publisher. See how to write a book proposal that will make publishers look at your idea, not bin it Learn how to view a publishing contract.

See where the negotiables are. See where the pitfalls are. If you are serious about getting your book published then you cannot afford not to buy this download.

It will be the best investment that you make. As an author I wish that this had all been explained to me before I signed the contract

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Shepherd
• Release date: Feb 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465792082

Book preview

How to become a published author

Published by Richard Shepherd at Smashwords

Copyright Richard Shepherd 2011 All rights reserved

Chapter 1. Introduction

The purpose of this book is to give potential authors an insight into the process that goes on when you write a book and then are fortunate enough for the book to be professionally published. I have yet to see any comprehensive information available on this either in book form or on the internet, but I wish that someone had told me what was involved before I went down this road.

Having looked around on websites selling books, such as Amazon, and book stores, I have yet to see this topic covered, although from a potential author’s point of view it is of great interest.

I wrote a technical book that as it happened turned out to be a successful world class book that was published by a major USA publisher.

The publishing process was an education for me and was a steep learning curve. The object of this book is to document how my technical book happened, from the very start of getting the idea to write a book to the finished product being available in a book store, and to pass on to potential authors the lessons learned along the way (and there were many!)

Although I am a technical computer person, and my book was very much a technical book, I will try to avoid using any techno speak or abbreviations that people do not understand.

The book that I published was a non-fiction technical book, but the rules still apply to any other book, whether it be fiction or non fiction. These are secrets that are very valuable to any potential author.

The world is full of people who want to write a book. The website lulu.com is testimony to this, apart from all the other sites offering self publishing. Many publishers will not accept unsolicited manuscripts and insist on using literary agents, simply because they would be inundated with possible books. This gives you an idea of the number of potential authors out there.

People have ideas about writing novels or non fiction books. If you are a good writer generally then working as an author sounds a very nice idea. You can work from home and work when you want to, fit in other tasks, and lead a relaxing work / life balance. These people, as I did, usually have a very hazy idea of how the publishing process works, unless they have already worked for a publishing organisation.

Most people think that the hard work is writing the book and finding a publisher. The publisher then prints and distributes their book and the royalties come rolling in whilst they move on to their next book project that will be gratefully received again by their publisher. They look to be earning enough from the royalties to give up their day job and work as a professional author.

Sounds like easy money? I have been working for over 35 years and I have yet to see ‘easy money’. Everything has to be worked for, and writing and publishing a book is no exception.

The problem is that there is no information for the first time author on how it all happens and what to expect. Even if you use a literary agent they will not give you all these details.

There is a great deal of work after signing the contract, and I found this period of time considerably harder than actually writing my book. Other authors who I have met during the course of my work say exactly the same thing.

The big question is ‘Is it worth it?’ Does it give you the opening to a better lifestyle? Will you be able to quit your day job? You will have to read this book to get the answer to that one!

If you have a best seller the monetary benefits can be enormous. Some authors are immensely wealthy However, best sellers are few and far between and some authors do not always look on book as a means of making money loads of money.

There are a lot of intangible benefits to being a published author with a major publishing house. For example, many people would be thrilled to walk into a large book store and see their book on the shelves. The best selling author J.K.Rowling was only looking for this pride when she published her first Harry Potter book. She little knew how successful it would be. There are also other benefits of having a book published that will be discussed later on in this book.

Chapter 2. About me

I was born in Windsor in England. I have moved several times and now live in a very small village near Reading (also in England). We have little country lanes with no pavements (sidewalks), no street lights and no gas. It is a very peaceful atmosphere and very different from where I work in London during the day.

I work as a consultant in the computer world for major financial institutions in the City of London. I generally work with Microsoft Access and Excel and use SQL Server and Oracle databases. I also develop web applications using Java Script and PL/SQL.

I originally qualified as an accountant after I left school. At that time, computers were huge machines kept in their own air conditioned buildings attended to by the ‘high priests’ of computing. They were mysterious objects and all people ever saw was input forms going to them and output from them in the form of boxes of huge printouts. They were looked upon as a very risky occupation because no one knew where the career path led. The word was that there would be no computer programmers in ten years time.

I remember suggesting to my father that I could become a computer programmer when I left school. His comment was ‘what happens to your job when all the computer programs have been written?’. I trained as an accountant instead as it was looked upon as a safe career.

Well, I am still designing and writing computer programs for some of the biggest companies in the world, and I do not notice a shortage of requirements. The world of computers is one of the most fast-moving and skills become obsolete within a matter of a few years.

My work as an accountant finished about twenty years ago, although my accountancy qualification is still useful if I am talking to accounting people about the design of a program. It enables me to understand many of the accounting terms that leave my colleagues bewildered.

I recently found myself in a presentation on foreign currency fluctuations and revaluations using debit and credit terminology. I was the only person in the room who fully understood what was going on!

As computers became more user-friendly, I found myself moving more into that area than accountancy. I taught myself to program in BASIC using a Sinclair ZX81 computer (which was one of the very first home computers), and as computers moved onto desktops I found myself in demand for writing macro programs within spreadsheets (Lotus 123 at that time). Although I was officially doing an accountants job, more of my time was being spent writing small programs to save my colleagues time.

Because these worked extremely well I was very much in demand and started to carve out a niche for myself.