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Basic Step by Step Guide to Subsidy Publishing
- Write your book and get it in an electronic format such as a Microsoft Word document. Take a look at our Book Design Wizard for help in designing your book in Word.
- Decide what your goals are in publishing your book. Do you want your book available to retail booksellers such as Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble? Do you just want your book available to friends and families? Do you want to make royalties off sales of your book? Do you want your book available in hardcover, paperback or e-book format? Do you want people to be able to buy your book online?
- Figure out what your budget is for publishing your book. Can you afford money for extra options or are you on a shoestring budget and just looking for the basics?
- Choose a subsidy publisher that can fulfill your goals and meet your budget. Look over their available options, their fees and their contract. Read their contract carefully and make sure you are not giving up the rights to your book. Many will have a brochure on their services and a guide to their publishing process, ask for it. A good place to start your search is through our Subsidy Publisher Listings.
- Once you have chosen your subsidy publishing company check with them to see what file format they require your manuscript to be in for submission. Common formats are MS Word and PDF. Sometimes they have a special software for you to use to get your manuscript to them in the proper format.
- Format you book. How you format your book depends on the publishing company and what services they offer. Some may format your book for you with a table of contents, index, page numbers, header etc. Others may require you to do all of the formatting yourself and submit your book to them exactly as you want it to appear in the finished book form.
- Cover art. Once again the cover art process depends on the subsidy publishing company you choose and the options they have available. Usually you will either design the cover art yourself or the publishing company will do it for you. Check with them to see what is needed for the cover art. If you are designing it yourself check to see what size and format it needs to be in and how to submit it to them. Remember, if you are designing the cover art yourself you must have the right to use the artwork you choose as a book cover.
- Author's bio and photo. Many books include an author's bio and photo, usually on the back cover or last page of the book. Check with the subsidy publisher you choose to see how they handle this and what format they need the photo in and how many words are allowed for your bio.
- Once you have submitted all of the required components of your book to the subsidy publishing company the next step is in their hands. What happens next depends on how they run their process. Usually what happens is they will work on getting your book together then send you some form of a proof and have you check it for any errors. Once you have approved the proof it will be sent off to the printer and they will inform you when your book is ready for purchase.
- If one of the options was a listing in Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble online the subsidy publisher will then submit your book to them. This is not an automatic process and can take some time for your book to be available through them. It can sometimes take up to 2-3 months after your book is submitted to Amazon and Barnes and Noble before your book will actually appear on their websites.
- Marketing. It is recommended that you wait for your book to be easily available before you start to market it. You will want to make sure that if someone follows your marketing efforts and wishes to buy your book that it is actually available for them to purchase. Once you are sure that your book will be available to potential customers then it is time to work on your marketing strategy. If your publishing contract includes some form of marketing package you will likely receive it when your book is published. There are many ways to market your book and I will not get into great detail about the different methods here. Some ways of marketing are: press releases, book signings, flyers, newspaper ads, business cards, postcards and web site listings. Some books about marketing your book: