If you are eager to have your books published by a publishing house then you are on the right page. Learn about the key points that will help you get the attention of those literary agents or a publishing house.
Before I answer this very important question, I just want to let you know that the fourth answer to this question completely crushes a myth that is associated with how would you go about doing this. That will save you both time and money.
So you are going to want to stick around for that. Now, let's get right into it. What are the best methods for self-published authors to get the attention of a literary agent or a publishing house?
This is a question that was asked to me today and I understand completely why they asked this question. Well, the key issue is you are looking to get your book published by a major thing. You envision a world where you are writing books.
You have a large audience who is following you, they are coming out to bookstores. You've got an agent, you've got a publishing company or house who are fighting to get your attention.
This is the ideal world that almost all authors would like to end up in. But where exactly do we get our start? We may even have already written our first book and we're thinking why are they not all coming after me?
After all, I did write a book. Maybe, you even contacted them yourself and so you are looking and saying, why did I do wrong here? Why are they not coming to me and saying, "oh you know why can't we publish your book immediately?"
I'll get to the answer in a little bit. You can check out my free Self-Publishing Secrets Checklist that will help you both to sell and create more books.
I have used it to create a 170 and also sell more books if you are following the steps. So make sure you check that out.
Let's get right into it. So, from my own story, when I first started publishing, I just didn't even realize it was even possible. I assumed I knew, of course, it's incredibly difficult to get picked up by a major publishing house and get their attention.
I started listening to podcasts and reading mini books and all these sorts of things. I began to understand that the profit margins are pretty low when you publish a book through a publishing house at about 10%.
Whereas, if you are publishing Kindle books, you're going to make 70% of the profit. And so, that impacted me and made me realize that what am I even thinking?
Why would I even want to go through a major publishing house or to get their attention? So, I have never actually been tempted but I understand that for many people, as long as you are just self-publishing, it's like, well, am I really an author?
I mean, I personally have sold thousands and thousands of books under my name, books that I have written. Do I feel like an author? Yes, I guess at one level, but maybe if I had published under a major author title.
They are worth hundreds and you know books being sold through the local bookstore that would make me feel a little differently and other people also. So, it does have an impact there.
If you want to be in the New York Times, best-seller, or something like that. Then, perhaps we would want to go that route. However, that is not something that I have desired to do.
Build Up A Following First
But I can completely understand why you as an author may wish to go that route or at least have the option open. The great part is that you could do both at the same time.
Now, let's get right into the answers. So, your first answer is if we want to get these people to get in touch with us, these publishing houses or the other which would be the literary agents, the first thing we are going to do is we are going to build up a following.
They want to know that if they sell our book, it's going to make money. That's the issue, they don't exist.
It's not a charity thing where their existence in life is to try to help new and upcoming authors to get their start. To find out maybe they can sell books or maybe they won't sell books. But it is much bigger than that.
They need to know if they are going to make a profit off of the books they sell. But how will they know if that is even possible? So the first thing is you need to build up a following.
Check out this related article: Selling 1,000 Copies In 1 Month?
There are many ways of doing this. The biggest one is content marketing. This is the freeway of going content marketing.
If you are a nonfiction author, this is a lot easier because you are going to build up an expertise in this subject that you are writing on. So, if it's about training dogs, you are going to build up a following by creating a blog or maybe creating a YouTube channel or a podcast.
You are going to be collecting emails from your website, you'll have on your blogs located. Your intern is going to be emailing those people and giving them the best tips on how to train their dog.
You're building up this expertise and then we come out with our book. Maybe you already have a book on the very subject that you are trying to sell. Then you will be pushing that traffic right towards the book which is going to trigger sales.
That brings us right into point number two, self-published books. So by self-publishing books, you get better at understanding what it is that your readers want to read. What types of books you need to write, the descriptions, and the covers.
You are listening to your audience. You're in forums where the audience is interested. If they are fiction books, of course, you may be giving samples of these books out on asking people for what they think.
Your audience itself is going to be in a position to tell you what exactly you've been doing wrong or right and what you can continue doing. Because the key is if you want to get better at something, practicing is a great way to do it.
Also, getting a coach that can look at what you are doing, who can also coach and guide you in this process. Making sure the books are edited properly with the best covers.
As you might imagine, if you put those books on the market, the market itself will then tell you and you are going to go back and forth. You'll start selling more books, that is going to get attention to these agents and publishers.
They are going to cut these publishing houses. They are going to see and when your books are selling a certain number whenever you approach them with your latest manuscript and say, "hey you could be making this money".
In addition to me "why don't we work together?" and they would say, "well, why should we work with you?" and you would say "look at these books I'm selling right now, don't you want to be taking part of this action here as well?". So that is a fantastic one.
Followers Are Not Really Buyers
The third point is the pricey way of doing it which is we can buy ads. And we'll be pushing people towards again back to our content marketing. To our blogs, getting them on our email list, informing them of the books that we already have available, and selling books this way.
I also, of course, run ads but not on Facebook but Amazon ads. That is, in fact, the key to winning in the Amazon game. You have to have ads, you can use ads to also drive traffic to your website, to your blog or to YouTube and things like that.
Check out this related article: Which Ad On Amazon Works Best?
So, if you've got a large bankroll, well then you can use that to drive that traffic. That will also get the attention of the agents because they are going to see it.
The fourth point, as I told you from the beginning is the top myth. The idea is that if you have a lot of Facebook followers or Instagram or Twitter or these sorts of things that somehow the agents are going to say, "oh you must be able to sell books".
This is the tricky part, just because you have a lot of followers doesn't mean those people are willing to open up their wallets and buy your books or products. In fact, many don't even understand the concept of sales.
They may have the audience because they have done this or that to get attention with whatever funny cat videos or something. But that doesn't tell us or maybe, people like seeing your personal life and you mentioned you are an author.