Some people get an agent and a publisher before they ever even start. Some write the book first and then take months or even years to get a publishing contract. The vast majority lie somewhere in between. You can turn to your online network for a variety of help with the process:
- Deciding on a publishing route—Talk to authors who have done similar projects to yours to help you get a better idea which publishing route (self-publishing, print-on-demand, small press, major publishing house) may be best for your situation. Get input from multiple people.
- Get referrals to agents and publishers—There are so many people trying to write books these days, and the market is so deflated, that it now can be as difficult to find an agent as it once was to find a publisher. A personal referral won't get you the contract, but it will get your proposal looked at in front of the hundreds of other unsolicited proposals they receive.
- Get feedback on your proposal—If you have built strong enough relationships, people will want to help. My co-authors and I had over a dozen people, mostly published authors, editors, and publishers, review our proposal for free. Their input certainly made it a much stronger proposal.
- Get endorsements—Yes, you can get endorsements even on a proposal. Remember, the agent or publisher probably doesn't know your industry intimately, so look for household names, or at least people whose organization and position makes them sound important.
The day has finally arrived—your book is hot off the press! Now, how are you going to make it a best-seller? Assuming you have a very limited travel and advertising budget, the only other way to reach large numbers of people is to turn again to your growing network to help you get the word out. But it's not going to be just to them and their immediate contacts—the idea is to now leverage those connections to help you reach a much larger audience. Here are just a few of the ways you can do this:
- Mailing list / forum announcements—Assuming you're an active member of that community.[, a book release is considered a major enough event that most mailing lists and discussion forums won't object to you announcing it one time, so long as you haven't been overly self-promotional all along.
- Media referrals-Remember the "R" in "PR". Develop relationships with media throughout the writing of your book. Once your book's done, now is the time to press them to be a guest on their show, to publish an article or book excerpt on their Web site or in their magazine, or to do a review of your book.
- Referrals to bulk buyers—Turn to your network for referrals to possible bulk purchasers of your book: corporations in your industry, professional associations, clubs, service organizations, etc.
Let's take a look now at some of the specific web sites and communities where you can start building such a network to support your book project.