NO ONE FACES
REJECTION MORE OFTEN THAN AN AUTHOR by Dan Poynter
Why do so many books get their start being
published by the author? Rejection! The explanation is simple and let us not
blame the publisher for failing to recognize good writing.
Publishers
cannot be experts in every type of fiction and nonfiction. Let’s face it,
publishers specialize or, at least, they have a record of accomplishment with
certain types of books. When your manuscript is rejected by a publisher, that
is not a bad grade for your work. It simply means that the publisher does not
get it! If a publisher specializes in travel books and you send a manuscript on
vegetarian eating or parenting, that publisher will not know whether your work
is good and will not know where to sell it. You do not want that publisher
anyway. To find the right publisher for your work, do your homework and match
your manuscript to the publisher.
Alternatively, to make more money,
get to press sooner and keep control of your work, publish yourself.
Self-publishing is legitimate, an early- American tradition. In the early days
of the New World, the person with the printing press was often the author,
publisher, printer and bookshop. Some people think that most of those who
self-publish do so because several publishers have turned them down. That is
occasionally true. However, most people today weigh the advantages and
disadvantages of selling out to a publisher and make an educated decision to
publish themselves. The big New York publishers (there are only five left due
to consolidation) publish only 22% of the books. The rest come from the 55,000
small (mom & pop) publishers and single-title self-publishers.
Self-publishing should not be confused with “Vanity” publishing
where an author pays (an exorbitant price to) a publisher to turn his or her
manuscript into a book.
Here is a partial list of well-known
self-published books. Some are still sold by the author, some authors have sold
out and some books have started successful publishing companies.
• What Color is Your Parachute by Episcopal clergymen Richard Nelson
Bolles. 22 editions, 5 million copies and 288 weeks on the New York Times
bestseller list. Now published by Ten Speed Press.
• The Beanie
Baby Handbook by Lee and Sue Fox sold three million copies in two years and
made #2 on the New York Time Bestseller list. • In Search of Excellence by
Tom Peters. Over 25,000 copies were sold directly to consumers in its first
year. Then it was sold to Warner and the publisher sold 10 million more.
• Real Peace—Richard Nixon in 1983. He did not want to wait 18
months for a publisher to get his vital message into the stores so he went
directly to a printer.
• The Celestine Prophecy by James
Redfield. His manuscript made the rounds of the mainstream houses and then he
decided to publish himself. He started by selling copies out of the trunk of
his Honda—over 100,000 of them. He subsequently sold out to Warner Books
for $800,000. The number-one bestseller in 1996, it spent 165 weeks on The New
York Times Bestseller list. Over 5.5 million copies have been sold.
• The One-Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson sold
over 20,000 copies locally before they sold out to William Morrow. It has now
sold over 12-million copies since 1982 and is in 25 languages.
•
Fifty Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth spent seven months on the New
York Times bestseller list and sold 4.5 million copies in its original and
premium editions.
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.
(and his student E. B. White) as originally self-published for his classes at
Cornell University in 1918.
• A Time to Kill by John Grisham. He
sold his first work out of the trunk of his car.
• The Joy of
Cooking by Irma Rombauer was self-published in 1931 as a project of the First
Unitarian Women’s Alliance in St. Louis. Today Scribners sells more than
100,000 copies each year.
• How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive by
John Muir sold over 2 million copies and led to the establishment of a
publishing company.
• Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun by
Wess Roberts sold 486,000 copies before selling out to Warner Books.
• Embraced by the Light by Betty J. Eadie spent 76 weeks on the New
York Times Hardcover Bestseller List, 123 weeks on the Paperback List and was
sold to Bantam Books for $1.5-million. The audio rights brought in another
$100,000. Then she established Onjinjinkta Publishing to publisher her future
projects.
• Sugar Busters! by four Louisiana doctors and a former
CEO sold 165,000 copies regionally in just a year and a half. Then they sold
out to Ballantine Books.
• The Wealthy Barber by David Chilton
has sold over a million copies in Canada (second only to the Bible in Canada)
and two million in the US. • When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple
has been through the press 42 times for 1.5 million in print. It allowed Sandra
Haldeman Martz to build Paper Mâché Press.
• Mary
Ellen’s Best of Helpful Hints by Mary Ellen Pinkham became a bestseller
and then she sold out to Warner Books.
• The Macintosh Bible by
Arthur Naiman has become the best-selling book on Apple products with over
900,000 sold.
• Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard has been in print
more than 45 years, 20 million copies are in print and it has been translated
into 22 languages. The book started a movement and later a church.
• Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan sold 370,000 copies before
it was sold to HarperCollins for $1.7 million. It was sold to two book clubs
and the foreign rights were sold to 14 countries.
• Feed Me,
I’m Yours by Vicky Lansky sold 300,000 copies. She sold out to Bantam and
they sold 8 million more.
• The Encyclopedia of Associations by
Frederick Ruffner led to the establishment of Gale Research Company with 500
employees.
• The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches. Joe Karbo never
sold out and never courted bookstores. He sold millions of his books via
full-page ads in newspapers and magazines.
• The Christmas Box by
Richard Paul Evans. The 87-page book took him six weeks to write. He published
it and promoted it himself. It did so well he sold out to Simon & Schuster
for $4.2 million. It hit the top of the Publishers Weekly bestseller list and
was translated into 13 Languages.
• Twelve Golden Threads by
Aliske Webb was rejected by 150 publishers. After self-publishing and selling
25,000 copies, she signed a four-book contract with HarperCollins.
• Life’s Little Instruction Book was initially self-published by
H. Jackson Brown. Then it was purchased by Rutledge Hill Press. It made the top
of the New York Times Bestseller List in hardcover and soft at the same time.
Over 5 million copies were sold.
• The Jester Has Lost His Jingle
by Barbara Salzman was turned down by eight publishers. The glossy hardcover
book made it to The New York Times Bestsellers list.
• Let’s
Cook Microwave by Barbara Harris sold over 700,000 copies. • Juggling for
the Complete Klutz by John Cassidy has sold over two million copies and lead to
the establishment of Klutz Press with over 50 award-winning books.
• Ben Dominitz published Travel Free and then founded Prima
Publishing. Prima now has 1,500 titles, 140 employees and does $60- million a
year.
• How to Flatten Your Stomach by Jim Everrode was
self-published before he sold out to Price\Stern\Sloan. Since then, the book
has sold over two million copies.
• Red Sky in Mourning by Tami
Oldham Ashcraft and Susea McGearhart was self-published and then sold to
Hyperion for an estimated $500,000.
• Stephen King self-published
an eBook titled The Plant and sold it online for $1/chapter.
•
The Guide to Getting it on was self-published by Paul Joannides after being
turned down by a number of publishers as being too racy. After being adopted as
a text by over 20 colleges and selling 150,000 copies, many of those same
publishers approached him with offers.
• Diets Don’t Work
has sold over 600,000 copies since being selfpublished in 1982.
•
Howe!, published in 1995 by Colleen & hockey great Gordie Howe has sold
nearly 135,000 copies in hardcover and raised $1 million for charitable causes.
• Dry It! You'll Like It (the bible of food dehydrating,
essentially) by Gen MacManiman is now in its 29th printing since 1973 with
280,000 sold.
• Life's Greatest Lessons: 20 things I want my kids
to know by Hal Urban was published by Nelson in 1992. It sold 16,000 copies.
Urban republished it himself and sold 60,000 copies. In 2001, he sold out to
Simon & Schuster for low six-figures.
• The Self-Publishing
Manual by Dan Poynter has 166,000 copies in print after fourteen revised
editions since 1979. The publisher is Para Publishing (Dan Poynter). Because of
this book, Poynter has been called “the godfather to thousands of
books.”
Other well-known self-publishers include: Deepok Chopra,
Louise Hay, Mark Twain, Ken Keyes, Jr., Gertrude Stein, Zane Grey, Upton
Sinclair, Carl Sandburg, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Edgar Rice
Burroughs, Stephen Crane, Mary Baker Eddy, George Bernard Shaw, Anais Nin,
Thomas Paine, Virginia Wolff, e. e. Cummings, William Blake, Edgar Allen Poe,
Rudyard Kipling, Henry David Thoreau, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman,
Alexandre Dumas, William E.B. DuBois, and Robert Ringer.
The news gets
even better. Book writing, publishing and promoting recently became faster,
easier and cheaper. Today we have ebooks and short-run POD and PQN printing.
Most authors are electing to make more money, get to press sooner and keep
control of their book by selfpublishing. There is a way to combat (manuscript)
rejection—circumvent the publishers and publish yourself. _
Dan Poynter does not want you to die with a book still inside you. You
have the ingredients and he has your recipe. Dan has written more than 100
books since 1969 including Writing Nonfiction and The Self- Publishing Manual.
For more help on book writing, see http://ParaPub.com. © 2003
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