Need advice on book publishing contracts

[shadu]

What is the best way to obtain a quality book publishing
contract?

[BigMcLargehuge]

1. can you be more specific, are you a printer or a writer

or something in between?

[graywarrior]

2. I just helped a friend get a book published

Go to the bookstore and buy or research books that list literary agents. Or go online. You need to find an agent who deals with the topic or subject you are writing about. Follow samples in book about writing query letters of agents. Send out as many as you can to any and all agents that deal in your topic. Let them find you a publisher. Unless you have published before, publisher will not talk to you...ever.
If you are writing fiction, you must send the first chapter. Again, follow protocol.

[Book Lover]

6. "Writer's Market 2004"

is the book I would point to you; it is a compendium of agent and publishing house listings, organized by genre type. I highly recommend working through an agent - they are the skilled negotiators, and are your best shot at the best contract for you. Good luck!

[shadu]

4. I am a writer

I have published articles in a national magazine.

[BigMcLargehuge]

10. then there are at least two thing you need before approaching a

publisher -

1. A completed manuscript (novels start at 100,000 words FWIW)
2. Someone to represent you

Finding an agent is as hard as finding a publisher. However and agent can open doors that a run of the mill writer can't. Expect to pay 10-20% of your earnings to an agent too.

First books don't earn much money and enjoy only limited print runs unless you are Michael Jordan or someone with immediate name recognition. This will dissuade agents from reading and responding to your work.

Here are the tools you need to get you started looking for someone to read/represent your work

Get the most current Writer's Market and sign up for their online service. Target your queries to the publishers that handle your specific type of work. Read a few recent titles from their catalog to see what the purchased. Perfect your query letter and proposal.

Prepare to wait.

Once you send out your first batch of submissions, get back to writing.

Don't take rejection personally. If you are fortunate enough to get a personal rejection you are one of the lucky few. Most times it will be a simple "dear writer - no thanks" letter.

Find a writer's group in your area, check it out, decide you hate everyone in the group, launch a coup of writer's group leadership, fail but do so in a blaze of glory that in turn consumes the entire group rendering them even more impotent than when you joined and are reduced to self fellation and the repeated readings of each other's journal entries and medical newsletters.

THEN, go back to writing. Write everyday. Write every spare minute. Write even when you aren't writing (listen to people talk, mentally catalogue facts and figures from other media sources, describe the places you're visiting as if you were writing about them).

Here's some perspective for you from my own history as a writer -

I've published a few pieces of short fiction in small press mags (I was paid in copies).
I've written a weekly column for the local paper (it ended when the publisher and I almost steanged each other one afternoon)
I hired the editor of that paper as my editor and agent, he has contacts through his work at the paper, and am starting to get proposals read and responded too.
How many books have I written? 4
How many short stories? easily 100+
How many hours per day I spend on my current project - 4
How many days I write a week - 7
How many words in current project 65000
How many words expected in total 120,000
Time spent on most recent project - 7 months.
Time from when I started writing to present - 15 years.

How much I've been paid - two copies of one magazine

[shadu]

11. Yikes!

Perhaps it is I who can help you.
Please look at my articles:
"Walk the Walk and Talk the Talk" for
"The American Cueist."

[amazona]

3. if you have to ask, you won't get one but here goes

Very few if any publishers are accepting work from unknowns, so you need to get an agent. Very few agents are currently accepting work from unknowns, so you need to be going to the right workshops, graduate programs, whatever to make contacts. Competition for the best programs is tight but there is probably no real alternative unless you are already a celebrity or something. If you MUST represent your own work, then there is some good information in How to Be Your Own Literary Agent by Richard Curtis. That said, I wrote several books and was never able to get "quality" contracts for any of them. And at that I counted myself lucky to be paid for my work instead of ending up in the no man's land of subsidy or print-on-demand schemes. If you want to get published and you do not have the right connections, you will take whatever pitiful crumbs the publishing industry throws at you. It isn't a career I would recommend to anyone but if you are dead set on this path, then good luck to you.

[shadu]

5. Publish America has offered:

$2000 up front, 8% of the first 2000 copies,
10% of the next 8000 copies, 12.5% there after.
Contract will bind me for seven years.

[Book Lover]

8. I don't know your market, but

will the publisher sell more than 2000 copies, bringing you to the next royalty step? That is, will the market support that many copies of your book? And did they give you real specifics regarding "binding", i.e., can you sell writing on a different topic to someone else?

[shadu]

7. I must leave now. Please respond.

I am sure many DU members are in the same boat.
I shall return later this evening.

[Lavender Brown]

9. Try Literary Marketplace for agent's listings

It really depends on the kind of publisher you're looking for, and what you're trying to publish.