How to Evaluate Small Book Publishers To Get Your Book Published

As a writer, you must have heard about plenty of well renowned book publishers such as Penguin Books India and many other book publishers who can boast of publishing the bestsellers. But do you know there are some small publishers who want to encourage new talent, who want to give new authors a chance to get their book published? These are publishers who have recently started out or the publishing houses are run by people who have very little knowledge about the publishing industry.

Small publishers have very little in common as each comes with unique contracts, interesting qualities and distribution power. Therefore, small presses take pride in their status and often call themselves independent publishers. However before we proceed to describe ways to evaluate small or big publications like, Penguin Books India, here are the basic information on how books make it to the market and how they are sold by the publisher.

A traditional publisher has four responsibilities:

·        Producing best quality books

Regardless of the format – hardbound or online book, a publisher needs to product a best quality book. He needs to take care of all aspects such as editorial, designing, packaging, production, book description, pricing and more.

·        Selling the book

Next, the publisher should also proactively sell the book to bookstores, libraries, and other retailers. He must also contact other places where books are sold or are made available for the public.

·        Marketing

It is an important aspect of a publisher job to market and publicize the book. For this he needs to get in touch with librarians, booksellers and various professional book reviewers.

Market the book to readers

Apart from marketing the book to the traders, it is important to market and publicize the book to readers. This can be achieved by direct marketing channels such as social media or through traditional marketing channels such as magazines, radio, newspaper, TV and more.

·        High quality book publication

Even when you are choosing a small book publisher, you need to make sure he produce high quality books only. If the publisher is not investing his time to produce high quality books, it can be a cause of concern.

Without putting in sufficient efforts to produce the book in a right manner, neither the publisher nor the author stands to gain much success. There are some small publication houses, which put a lot of burden on the author to get the book right. These publication houses lean on the author to come up with the best title and work on the marketing strategy on their own. So while experienced authors can deal with marketing and titles, inexperienced authors find it difficult to do the same.

If you are dealing with a small press who makes you pay upfront for their in-house editing, designing or production services, they are not the traditional publishers. While traditional publications pay the author, hybrid publishers as the author to pay for some costs upfront.

Some question to ask

As an author, you have the right to ask question until you are satisfied with the answers and your doubts are cleared. Certain questions you can ask include:

·        What will be the editing process be like? Will the content be edited, proofread or copy edited? What are the responsibilities of the publication house?

·        Will your designs be professional? Will they encourage the readers to take a look at the book?

When hiring a book publisher such as Penguin Books India or other publishers, make sure to read book description of their previous books. Are they well done? Do they excite you to read the book?

As small publications, they may work with a distributor rather than having an in-house sales team. However having a distributer or having your book distributed does not mean that it is being sold to the audience. It is difficult for small publications to get a distributer on board who can actually pitch the books.

Selling the book is the most difficult part. However if the small publication is not sell the book to anyone, it should not deter you from choosing one. Small publications can help you sell your book locally or regionally. Moreover if you are able to secure a significant media attention, it will make it easy to reach out to people.

Traditional publishers will negotiate every single contract. However for someone who has very little experience in the industry, starting out with a small publication can be the right choice as they will make it extremely easy to get your book published. So instead of going to big publication houses like Penguin Books India, make sure to get in touch with a small publication house.