Publishing Revolution

Every aspect of how books are pub­lished has changed in the last 36 months. Here’s how you can get your book pub­lished by a real pub­lisher with­out mak­ing a cru­cial error that could cost you your dream. 

By Wendy Keller, Lit­er­ary Agent

The sta­tis­tics are scary. More than 1 mil­lion new books were cat­a­loged last year. The explo­sion of ebooks and the clo­sure of the Bor­ders chain skewed the num­bers that pub­lish­ers have relied on for over 75 years when mak­ing deci­sions about which books to publish.

Mas­sive industry-wide lay­offs and the clo­sure of many lit­er­ary agen­cies have dried up oppor­tu­ni­ties for new authors like never before.  Books that would have received a six fig­ure advance just a few years ago are now lucky to get $25,000. Books that might have got­ten $25,000 are lucky to be pub­lished at all.

Agents are forced to screen poten­tial new projects much more care­fully because pub­lish­ers screen poten­tial new projects much more carefully.

FIND THE LOOPHOLE, GET THE DEAL

The pub­lish­ing indus­try has chick­ened out.  Even while I am dis­ap­pointed by my industry’s new meth­ods, I also real­ize their absolute eco­nomic neces­sity.  Now pub­lish­ers insist on the “sure bet”.  With every edi­tor capa­ble of los­ing his or her job over the next flop, they want to be cer­tain your book is going to be a profit cen­ter for their pub­lish­ing house.

There’s just one way to assure them your book is wor­thy: it’s called a “Plat­form”.  A plat­form is a large, grow­ing group of fans who are fol­low­ing you, trust­ing you, buy­ing from you, and who con­sider you a thought leader in your sub­ject area.

These days, the first ques­tion every edi­tor asks every agent when we pitch them on a new book is, “What’s the author’s plat­form?” Lucky for you, there’s a loophole.

WHAT IT TAKES TO SNARE A PUBLISHER

The loop­hole may well sur­prise you.  Smart would-be authors over­come their ini­tial resis­tance to the need to build a plat­form before the book is pub­lished or even CAN be pub­lished, so your next ques­tion is, “OK, how do I build a plat­form fast?”

The loop­hole is: size doesn’t mat­ter.  Growth does.  That’s right.  While of course it’s  fab­u­lous if you have 200,000 fans, that’s hard to achieve in a rea­son­able amount of time.  But if you have, say, 5,000 this month (a very doable num­ber) and you have 5,500 next month (10% growth) then you’re going to get atten­tion.   The growth per­cent­age is appeal­ing because…

 PUBLISHERS WANT RISING STARS

If you do the right things, the ones that will prove you’ve got a win­ner, pub­lish­ers will want your book. And if there’s even a whiff that pub­lish­ers will like what you’re doing, agents will rush for the chance to rep­re­sent you.

Turns out, some­where along the path of my life as an award-winning jour­nal­ist, PR Newswire employee, sell­ing scripts in Hol­ly­wood and now over twenty years as a lit­er­ary agent, I’ve learned how to quickly get to the bot­tom of “What’s sexy?” What angle in your book is most likely to get the pub­lic to pay atten­tion and buy? How do authors like you attract that atten­tion, lever­ag­ing the time, tal­ent and other resources at your dis­posal now?

I can answer those ques­tions.  For fun, I’m the author of 31 pub­lished books under 9 pseu­do­nyms.  I’ve been fea­tured in all kinds of media includ­ing Date­line NBC, Han­nity, Polit­i­cally Incor­rect, New York Times, Chicago Tri­bune, Wall Street Jour­nal, Glam­our UK, Play­boy, Dr Phil, and hun­dreds more. I know how to get you media atten­tion before and after your book is pub­lished – and I can teach you.

Given my unusu­ally well-suited back­ground, I may be the most qual­i­fied per­son in the pub­lish­ing indus­try who can advise poten­tial authors like you on exactly what to do and how to get the plat­form you need, so you can get a pub­lish­ing con­tract.

I invite you to invest in a con­sul­ta­tion with me. I will ded­i­cate an hour of my time.  We will focus on pre­cisely deter­min­ing what has kept you from suc­cess and how to fix it. You will dis­cover how to make your book attrac­tive to a great agent (maybe me) and then a great pub­lisher, so you can become a suc­cess­ful pub­lished author.

RESULTS SEEN QUICKLY

Let me explain some­thing: I won’t let you waste your time.  And I never waste my time.  Not on stub­born unpub­lished writ­ers; not on projects that have no future; and not on peo­ple who are unwill­ing to care­fully con­sider expert advice.

The way it works is you sign up for an hour with me now.  You’ll be offered a selec­tion of appoint­ment times.  You can send in writ­ten ques­tions for me to review if you wish and I’ll review your pro­posal (again) too.

Most peo­ple who con­sult with me say it was “a huge turn­ing point” or “a mind-opening expe­ri­ence”.  Some of them are pub­lished now, oth­ers will be.  When we, you’ll see things the way a pub­lish­ing insider views them — a whole new perspective.

Peo­ple are always stunned that the hour flew by so fast.

You will emerge with a crys­tal clear game plan for What To Do Next to get your book on track for pub­li­ca­tion – cus­tomized to your spe­cific con­tent, your goals and who you really are as a person.

There are an esti­mated 1,782 pro­pos­als slosh­ing around the indus­try at any given time for every one that gets a deal.  Are you The One?  Do you want to leap over the com­pe­ti­tion, attract an agent, get a pub­lisher and finally become a real author? Then take the first step. Click the but­ton below to get your game-changing hour with me.  It’s even guar­an­teed or your money back!  That’s how sure I am that we can trans­form your pub­lish­ing jour­ney in just sixty fast minutes.  

Give your book a fight­ing chance – get an expert on your side today.