Practical guide: “How to publish and sell your book? Having nothing but a book and talent.” Selling a story for real money - is it possible in today’s Internet environment? Key points about selling on Amazon

This article is for you!

It is no secret to many that writing books is not only exciting, but also a profitable business that can make you popular even with one written book. Many beginning writers are frightened not so much by the writing itself, but by the further process and the feasibility of further actions - financial investments, printing a book, finding buyers, etc.

But not everyone knows that today there are free services that help not only publish, but also sell your own books without spending a penny.

If you already have a written work or book, you should show a little patience and endurance to achieve the desired result. For many aspiring writers, it all ends after writing a few works, which sit on the computer hard drive or on a shelf. The problem is that they don't understand how to sell their work.

Amazon

Are you familiar with the name Amazon?

Amazon is an international online store that has been operating for more than ten years in the sales of various goods, initially focusing only on books.

Few people know that Amazon prints books absolutely free if there is demand for them. Even one book is in demand. That is, Amazon itself will print and sell your books, all you have to do is receive a monetary reward and promote the book if there is no demand.

This is what books look like on Amazon:

Please note that under each book there is a rating consisting of stars. Accordingly, after reading your book, readers should be left with a positive impression that will allow them to leave a good review. The sales of your book largely depend on this.

Book download service

In order to start selling your own book, you will need to understand the free service provided by Amazon, which is called Print on demand. This service is located at www.createspace.com

Createspace– a service through which the text of your book is downloaded along with illustrations, cover and other additional attributes. All information is stored in an electronic database. The document formats available for downloading are standard, that is, the text must be printed as a prc, zip, htm, html, pdf, rtf, doc, docx, epub, txt, mobi file. For faster saving, the cover and text should be uploaded as one file in pdf format. If there is no cover for the book, the service offers you to choose from standard blanks, or use the editor to create your own unique reproduction. All this is convenient, modern, unique and without extra costs.

It's simple. The English language may cause difficulty; you can open the page in browsers with a translator, for example in Google Chrome, this will make the task easier.

Highlights of Selling on Amazon

After files are uploaded, they go through a moderation stage. Administrators check compliance with the requirements. The procedure takes about a day; in case of any deviations, the document is sent for revision. The requirements check does not include grammatical or spelling errors. Please note that if you do not carefully check your book before sending it, you may start selling your book with errors :)

When positive decision, the book is automatically sent to the store. To start selling you only need to press one button - sales activation. Now everyone who attracts the attention of your book will be able to buy it in printed form with a couple of clicks, or purchase the electronic version. (To activate electronic sales, you must register with Kindle Direct Publishing)

You, as the author, have the opportunity to order 5 copies of the book, which will cost $5 each, and you will additionally need to pay for delivery. As a result, you will be able to estimate what the book will look like. Amazon has offices in different countries, therefore, the book is printed at the printing house closest to you that belongs to this holding.

Another important pleasant feature from Amazon is free registration in the ISBN catalog, where a special author’s code is issued.

The only negative segment of this technology is that all books are published only in paperback. But you can survive it :)

About profit

Of course, there is a chance of getting rich from writing a book, but since this is your first book and you don’t have regular readers, positive reviews, etc. You should start promoting it on the Internet. Today, the number of English-speaking buyers ready to purchase a book on the Internet significantly exceeds our compatriots, and by writing or translating a book into English, you can increase sales hundreds of times. Although there are many examples of Russian authors who managed to sell more than 10,000 copies in half a year.

The service of posting a book is free for you; Amazon takes its percentage only from the sale of the book. You, as the author, are entitled to 35% of the sale, considering that you are a novice author, this is not even bad! You set the price for the book yourself, just keep in mind that you cannot set the price lower than the cost of printing, it ranges from 1 to 4 dollars for each copy of the book.

Taxation

The sales tax is fixed, according to American law it is 30 percent. That is, having sold one copy, it is considered sold in the United States of America. You can eliminate this taxation by becoming a non-resident. This procedure is quite tedious and can take several months, as a result you will be required to pay tax in your country. If you want, of course, since our tax office will not be able to track your sales from Amazon.

For those who still want to carry out this kind of procedure, you need to submit an application to the IRS USA website.

You can see how to do this on their website, by the way, the Russian language is provided there.

Today, it is quite difficult to make money by writing a book in the CIS, since almost no one is interested in purchasing a product from a novice author. Therefore, cooperation with Amazon can be a serious starting point for an aspiring author.

Remember that the bulk of Amazon are English-speaking consumers. Therefore, it is worth trying to implement the book in English language, this can increase sales hundreds and even thousands of times. It's not that hard to do. All you need is to write your book, send it to to a good translator and upload to Amazon. As a result, popularity may begin to grow in geometric progression, bringing you good profits!

How to withdraw money from Amazon

There were proposals to open an account in an American bank with a number of big problems for which, as a rule, few people can find the time and money.

The second option is to find friends who already have an account in an American bank. My first call to a good traveler friend resolved this issue. He suggested me a service that can withdraw money from Amazon. I remembered that I once read about him and even started registering. I was surprised that a few years ago, upon request, information about him appeared in the first lines, but now I couldn’t find him without a hint.

The service is called payoneer, I’ll post information about its tariffs below. You have 2 registration options:

P.S. Lifehack– account maintenance fee is $29 per year, you can use the account without a card until you collect a sufficient amount that will allow you to pay the annual maintenance fee.

At the end of last year I published four books. If you want to learn how to publish and sell your book, read this article in which I tell you what it cost me.

Advantages of working with publishers

Collaboration with a well-known publishing house is the dream of many aspiring authors. The problem is that a well-promoted publishing house needs well-promoted authors, but beginners are not interesting, since there is a risk of not selling out the circulation and going into the red.

According to Vera Ezhkina, producer of book projects at the Mann, Ivanov and Ferber publishing house, the first print run of the business book is 2,000 - 3,000 copies. “If the author is famous, then at the moment of signing the contract he receives an advance payment in the amount of royalty for the first printing, which is 10% of the wholesale cost of the books (30-40 rubles per copy),” says Ezhkina.

Pavel Podkosov, general director of the Alpina Non-Fiction publishing house, believes that due to the economic crisis, the average circulation may drop to 2,000 copies. According to him, the publishing house considers the publication of a book as a joint project with the author and relies on royalties, and not on an advance payment. “Royalties amount to 10% of the wholesale price of a book and, with large circulations and constant reader demand, can bring serious income,” adds Podkosov.

A thousand rubles is also money

You can, of course, overwhelm publishing houses with applications, at the same time write books that can become bestsellers and thus achieve a contract. This option seems to me emotionally too expensive, since I never liked asking, and I don’t really want to give out my ideas in the form of applications.

So I decided to publish and sell existing books myself. Currently there are only five books, this year I plan to publish twelve more (four of which have already been written). With a certain skill, publishing one high-quality book every month is not so difficult, the main thing is to “make a plan” every day according to the signs.

The five books I wrote bring in approximately 1,000 rubles a week or 52,000 rubles a year. I count sales made both on this site and in the liters online store (even if the book is presented in other online stores, for example, on Ozone, its sales still go through liters). Of course, sales vary from month to month, but on average the figures I gave above are obtained.

At the same time, I receive most of my income from sales on this site, since when selling books in online stores, my royalties are only 25% of the cost of the book.

Book cover design, proofreading, book layout - go to "".

What is your goal?

You should have a goal before you even start writing your book. Without knowing the goal, it is difficult to choose a promotion and sales model.

My goal, which I plan to achieve, including through self-publishing and selling books, is to create an author platform. I constantly study the needs of writing people and see that I have chosen the right strategy. Since the middle of last year, the Magazine's audience has been growing by about 10% monthly and now the main core is not copywriters, but people who want to learn how to write in order to achieve their goals in work and life. The number of subscribers who work in large corporations is growing.

The purpose should define the main theme of your books. To create a strong author platform, you need to work in the narrowest niche possible, in which there are buyers with money. All twelve books I'll be publishing this year will focus on writing, author marketing, publishing, promotion, and more.

The only exception to this rule are two books, “Online Business for Creative People” and “Email Marketing for Creative People.” Yes, these books are not about how to write articles. But I wrote and published them because they are programmatic for me. In them I shared my experience and ideas of polite or intelligent marketing that I follow.

How to publish your book

I have experience communicating with Ozon and liters, and in both cases this experience cannot be called positive. There is no point in sending letters to these stores; they either do not reach their recipients or are ignored. From the point of view of stores, I understand this attitude - I don’t want to bother with private authors, since I need to increase my staff and act as a tax agent if the author works as an individual.

But if there is demand, then there will be supply. This is how the Ridero service from the Publishing Solutions company appeared.

Here is what is written on the “About the service” page on the Ridero website:
Our service allows you (as an author and/or publisher) to greatly facilitate the work of preparing a book for publication and focus on the most important thing - creativity and careful preparation of the text.

I chose Ridero and it is with its help that I have published and will continue to publish my books, since I do not yet see any other alternative. Of course, I would like to sign an agreement directly with liters, but I have not been able to do this yet. Or maybe Amazon will allow you to sell books in Russian, that would be really cool!

On the one hand, Ridero seems to be an ideal service, since it allows access to online stores and assigns an ISBN for free (for a book about a copywriting agency, I bought the ISBN, UDC and BBK codes myself at the Russian Book Chamber and it cost me 3,422 rubles ).

On the other hand, Ridero transfers only 25% of the cost of the book to the author, distributing the remaining three quarters among itself, contractors and taxes. From this we can conclude that publishing books through Ridero should be done only from an image point of view, to build a reputation and collect reader reviews.

If you want to make money selling your books, you need to sell them yourself on your website or blog. I'll talk about this below.

How to layout an e-book in Ridero

Ridero has an editor that allows you to layout a book using a built-in set of layouts (4). The top line displays a thumbnail of the cover and the title of the book (1), below is the text formatting panel (2), in the right column above the layouts there are text styles (3), which must be used, since the book structure and table of contents are formed on their basis. It is possible to pay for the services of a proofreader directly from the editor (5), but more on that below.

Working in the Ridero editor is not very convenient. There is no autosave and you need to constantly remember that after each change the material must be saved. You cannot make changes to the layouts; for example, I don’t like the indentation on the red line, but there is no way to remove it. And, what is most inconvenient, you cannot make hyperlinks active yourself. Yes, Ridero employees can do this for you for free, but to do this you need to write an email to support and ask them to make all the links active.

Ridero's big advantage is its support service. She is really polite and professional. The only inconvenient thing is that she does not respond quickly and only in the afternoon, Moscow time. I didn’t skimp on asking questions, since many aspects of publishing the book were not intuitively clear to me, and the service’s help did not answer my questions.

Ridero allows you to download a book in all the most popular formats, which is convenient for independent sales. At the end of last year, downloading all files was free, the service plans to charge a fee of 900 rubles for downloading files of one book in PDF, MOBI and FB2 formats, while the developers promise to leave downloading a book file in EPUB format free.

It is better not to make a book cover yourself; it will not look professional, since you are a writer, not a designer. Ready-made, high-quality covers can be purchased at “” in (covers cost from 1,499 rubles).

How to promote your book

To promote a book, it needs to be read as much as possible. more people. Ideally, it's good to have readers who already like what you do. Send them your book for free and ask for an honest review. Don't ask for positive feedback; loyal readers don't like and won't flatter you. Maybe not everyone will praise you and not everyone will give you five stars, but at least you will develop a respectful and trusting relationship with your readers.

When I promoted my book, this is exactly what I did. Using the MailChimp service, I selected subscribers who have the highest ratings. This group included approximately a thousand people. I then sent out an email offering to download any (or all) of the books for free, read them, and write an honest review. A week after the free giveaway, I gently reminded them to write a review. All. You can see the result in the picture above.

It was magical

When I offered my book to readers in exchange for a review, I knew that there would definitely be someone who would not like the books. There were such people, but in the minority, although I was internally prepared for criticism, since for a long time I worked as a journalist and often my articles were torn to smithereens.

I'm lucky with my readers - thank you! The idea of ​​polite or intelligent marketing, it seems to me, is not yet widely supported by the majority of Internet marketers who vociferously proclaim their success, since this approach requires much more effort, as well as time, intelligence and education, to get the first results. But these results will not be one-time, but permanent and last a lifetime.

What mistakes have I made

I did not foresee that after a single proofreading of the book by a proofreader, errors and typos would remain in the text. If I had foreseen this, I would have directly asked readers not to mention errors and typos in reviews (or even better, I would have ordered double proofreading before the free distribution of books). But I didn’t foresee this, because I relied on Ridero proofreaders. As soon as I realized that there were a lot of errors, I sent the books to my proofreaders for re-proofing and am now waiting for the books to be re-published in all online stores.

Many readers were unable to open the archive with the book files, since the name of the archive and files were in Russian. I changed the names to English and the problems immediately disappeared.

How to sell books on a website

That's all, all that remains is to touch on the issue of selling books yourself on your website or blog. I recommend using the payment acceptance form (registration required) from the Yandex.Money service - it has a very attractive commission: 0.5% for a transfer from a wallet and 2% for a transfer from a Visa or MasterCard card.

On initial stage you can completely get by with this form, and when sales reach the desired level, then connect services such as JustClick, GloPArt, E-Autopay, EcommTools, etc., especially if you plan to sell through partners.

Please note that when creating a form, you must check the email checkbox (1) so that you know to which address to send the file with the book. You can also check the Full Name checkbox (2), in this case you will be able to identify the buyer.

You can go a little further and automate the process of sending a book by specifying a link to the file with the book in the “Address for redirect” field (3). After successful payment, the buyer will be automatically redirected to this address and the browser will download the file with the book to his computer.

I’ll tell you about several services that will help those who know how and love to write start making money on the Internet, and most importantly, have already written something that, in their opinion, can be sold.

Each of these sites has its own features and features; I will try to focus on the main ones.

Bookmate Publisher

This is a section of the Bookmate book club, which is actually intended for the legal reading and storage of e-books. But, thanks to Publisher, the author can upload his own books to the service and receive the following features:

Books.ru

This service also makes it possible to earn money on the Internet from selling your own works. Moreover, both electronically and in paper form. To do this, register, go to your account, open your profile card -> Bookshelf -> Sell books. Here you select the option you want, fill out the form and download the book. After that, it will be moderated for about a day, and then it will go on sale.

"Publish a book"

This site is intended for those who want to publish their book in electronic format, but do not know how to approach this. The “Publish a Book” team will do everything for you. Your task is only to create the text, and the illustrations, protection, design and generally everything necessary for your work will be done by professionals. Of course, all this is not free, but the cost will depend on the amount of work and the format of the book, so the price is negotiated individually.

BookLand

The BookLand website is a bookstore and electronic publishing house in one package. That is, here the author enters into a contract not only for publication electronic version of your work, but also for its placement in the online store. Go to the “Copyright Holders” section, fill out the form and send a request. You will then be asked to sign a contract and you can submit your manuscript for review. Everything is done conveniently, so you'll quickly figure it out. Books, if desired, can be published in protected and non-copy-protected formats. The price is also set by the author. Revenue is withdrawn through Interkassa - a convenient tool that allows you to withdraw money to a card, both in Russia and Ukraine.

Russolit

The Russian meeting of writers is rather social network, where communication is given no less attention than reading. To sell your books online using Russolit, you need to register here, confirm registration, go to Personal Area-> “My works” -> “Add a book”, fill in all fields, upload the file and cover. There is no pre-moderation. The payment systems WebMoney and Robokassa operate here; you can withdraw from 500 rubles. Mostly, novice authors set the price at 15-25 rubles.

Publicist

This service allows the author, using his own EBook Publicant program, to create from an existing manuscript e-book and sell it using the WebMoney Transfer system. That is, if you do not have WebMoney Keeper, then you urgently need to create it.

By the way, if you decide to make money on the Internet, then sooner or later you will need the WebMoney payment system, so take the time, register and download the WM Keeper wallet to your computer.

All e-books in Publikant are placed in exe format. Thanks to this program, the text of the book is displayed on the reader's device. The text cannot be copied, and the book itself cannot be printed.

Glopart.ru

If you do not write fiction, but something more mundane, for example: “How to get married after 50” or “How to grow pineapples on the balcony,” then Glopart.ru is ideal for you. Its main visitors are the authors of various Internet services that make money from affiliate programs. For example, the author of a blog about agriculture I went to the site, saw a book about raising broilers or breeding muskrats, wrote a blog article about it and posted a link to the book. His reader who needs this information, read the article, followed the link and bought the book. The author received money for the book, the blog owner received a commission.

To add a book to Glopart.ru, register, log into your account, go to the “Products” section -> “Add” and fill out all the windows. You set the price of the book and the amount of royalties to partners yourself.

Ecwid

This is a service that allows you to quickly create an online store. I won’t write about it here, because I wrote in detail about its installation and use in the articles “” and “”. It will be useful to you if you create your own blog or Facebook page to advertise your works.

Own blog

Many modern writers not only have their own blogs, but also generally gained fame first on the Internet, and then only began to be published in real life. You can, of course, have a blog on a free platform, like LiveJournal, but if you are truly serious about your creativity, immediately create it on a paid hosting - freedom is more valuable. Blogs contain chapters from books, some observations, articles on the topic of the day, personal photographs, illustrations for your books, maps of the worlds that you describe, etc. Many also put a button - “Support the project financially.”

Another way to earn money to publish your masterpiece is. But in order for people to start flocking to your book, you must prove that it is either very useful or super-duper interesting.

I think that these services are more than enough for those who are looking for how to sell books online. For those who are seriously interested in publishing books, I suggest reading the advice of Alexander Lukyanenko, the author of the well-known “Watches” and other science fiction and fantasy that I dearly love. He conducted an experiment on the topic “can a writer make money on the Internet” and came to the following conclusions:

Sometimes I come across authors (or those who consider themselves such) on the Internet and see that it is quite possible for a beginning writer to make money here, although until fame comes, and with it a stable income on the Internet, you will have to work a lot.

18 min

18 min

Text by Maria Ovseets, website journalist

Photo Cover: Firestock.ru

Who should write a book and why, is it possible to make money from it and how to make sure that the publishing house is interested in your manuscript. We are talking exclusively about business literature and books about self-development. Fiction- a completely different story.

Why write a book?

You've probably noticed that some entrepreneurs and professionals are talked about more often than others. Interviews, comments as experts, television broadcasts. Someone will say: “Lucky.” But most likely, the person is working on his personal brand.

“A book is a great way to express yourself, as well as a good opportunity to structure what is in your head, to “put everything in order.” It's worth writing a book if you're your personal example You can motivate a person to action - to improve their life, for example, or give him valuable knowledge in the field in which you are a professional.”

It doesn't matter who you are - a psychologist, artist, cosmetologist or entrepreneur. If you have valuable knowledge, you can write a book.

Here are just a few examples:

Natalie Ratkowski - illustrator, designer, book author "Draw every day" , "Allow yourself to create" , "Profession - illustrator" .

Maxim Ilyakhov - editor of Artem Gorbunov's Design Bureau, creator of the service "Glavred", book author " Write, shorten: How to create strong text" .

Alexander Levitas - marketing consultant, business coach, author of books "Express Marketing" , "More money from your business" .

Maxim Batyrev - famous Russian manager, author of the book « 45 manager tattoos » , "Agreed" !

How to self-publish a book

You need a manuscript, a printing house and money. All costs in this case are borne by you: editing, cover design, layout, printing. You will also have to do the distribution and sale of the circulation yourself.

“If a person has a clear purpose, why he needs a paper book, then the issue of distribution will be quite clear. I wrote a book for those who come to study at our school - it is clear that I will distribute it through these people.

If the author expects to sell the book through bookstores, I advise you to find out their attitude to this in advance to avoid disappointment. Typically, large organizations do not like to get involved with “singles” (one product item) and may simply refuse. Registration of business activities may also be required.

Warehouse space in stores is limited. They will accept 5 copies for sale, and in a month they will sell 2 or 3. To sell a lot of books, you will have to find a dozen, if not more, stores and monitor the “movement of goods.” And separately with the accounting departments, resolve the issue of receiving money. In general, the “book trade” is a separate business, and if you get involved in it, you will have to immerse yourself in the business completely.”

Publishing a book can take on average six months to a year.

Through special services

For example, Ridero. It is a digital platform for self-publishing books without intermediaries. Allows authors of any genre to turn a text file (for example, in doc format) into a layout-based electronic or paper book in a few minutes for free and place it in online bookstores (provided that the book is moderated, this process takes an average of 5 days). Ridero, together with the Ozon online store, ensures the distribution of paper books starting from 1 copy without prior printing of the edition.

You won't have to pay anything at the initial stage. Ridero receives a commission from the sale of each copy of your book: the store commission and the cost of printing (in the case of paper copies) are deducted from the price; from the remainder, the author receives 80%, Ridero - 20%.

The service also offers paid services: promotion, book trailer creation, proofreading, cover design, etc.

When to contact the publisher

“Ideally, there is a concept thought out to the smallest detail and a couple of chapters. If there is interest, the publisher will have time to adjust the direction. Or, after taking a lap of honor through publishers’ email accounts, the author will understand something for himself. This is not a universal recommendation, but my personal opinion based on many years of experience working with non-fiction."

How to find a publisher

“Go to a bookstore, find books that are most suitable for your topic (at the same time, you will see how many there actually are). Then see who publishes and find the publisher online. Typically, if publishing houses are interested in collaborating with outside authors, there is a special form on the website that can be filled out and submitted.

This form - plan prospectus can be downloaded on our website. She is very comfortable. The prospectus plan can be used as a sample. It’s better, after sending the application, find the phone number of the person in charge of this or that direction and call him, this will draw attention to you.

If you start promoting your text in the form of an e-book or a blog on the Internet and gain popularity, the publishing house will find you.”

Writing for money in Russia is not an easy task

Chance to get into publishing

“We evaluate the topic and main idea of ​​the book, the value of the content, the author’s style, the situation on the topic in the market, the budget of the project, which depends on the complexity of the preparation, we look at who the author is. This is very individual process. Overall we should like the book. The author of “Alpina” is an intelligent professional, knowledgeable in his subject area, who knows how to put words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs in such a way that after reading his book the reader will be enriched with new knowledge, inspired to achieve accomplishments and set off to make himself and the world a better place.

We receive 20-25 applications per week through the form on the website or letters from potential authors directly, which means up to 100 per month, more than 1,000 per year. In 2015, we published a record number of “self-propelled” authors - 9 books. On average, usually no more than 5".

Is it possible to make money from a book?

“Writing for money in Russia is not an easy task. We usually work with the author without an advance and on a royalty scheme - a percentage of the sale of copies of the book. Standard royalty rate: 10% of the wholesale price of a paper book, 25% of net sales for an e-book. The recommended retail price (the one you should see in a store if it listens to the publisher) is usually more than double the wholesale price. That is, if a book costs 790 rubles on a store shelf, then we will consider royalties from 324 rubles to the author. IN last years the first circulation usually does not exceed 2,000 copies.”

Authors' experience

“I wrote the book in my free time, sometimes on weekends. Unfortunately, it was not possible to write every day. In total, the work took 2 years. After the book was finished, I read a lot of advice on how to get it published. One of them read: if your book fits into a series of publishers, recommend it to them.

In 2014, only MIF had a series of business novels, but they promptly refused my offer, explaining that business novels sold the worst among them. A little upset, I compiled a list of all business literature publishers in Russia and began sending them requests to publish a book. To search for publishers and contacts, fill out various forms on the sites and fulfilling the requirements for submitting the manuscript took a couple of months. Most of the requests remained unanswered.

Several publishers offered to publish the book at my expense, despite the fact that no one requested or read the book’s manuscript. One editor directly wrote that if I were a famous blogger (with tens of thousands of subscribers) or media personality, then they are ready to print even photos of my pets or my mother’s recipes.

Publishers are afraid to take risks by publishing an unknown author, but here there was a double risk - an unknown author and a rare genre at the intersection of business and fiction.

As a result, when I was ready to post the book for free on my website, I remembered that I had not received a response from the Eksmo publishing house, although it is written on their website that they respond within a month. I called them to clarify the fate of my manuscript. It turned out that the editor had not seen it and asked to send it again.

A few months later, the editor replied that she liked the book and would talk to management about publishing it. A few months later, I received another refusal: the publishing house did not know how to promote a business novel on the market.

Since I am a professional marketer, I decided to prepare a book promotion plan myself. I made it and sent it to the editor. Two years later, Eksmo agreed to publish my book.

Few edits were made to the manuscript. It took about six months to prepare the layout, approve the cover and print the book. The title of the book “Marketing Girl” was also suggested by the publisher; initially I simply called the manuscript “Marketing Novel”.

The book's circulation is 3,000 copies. Most of them have sold out. The book was a bestseller on ozon.ru and liters.ru. On the site electronic library Mybook she has more than 14,000 readers. According to my calculations, about 20,000 people read the book.

I personally earned a little less than a month’s salary from the book. You can make money from business literature only if you have a series of books or use a book for self-promotion.”

“We published the book on our own. In my case, the production process was easy to reproduce using the staff of our company: editor, proofreader, layout designer - I have all these specialists. I spent 10 minutes drawing the cover. Printing services are not cheap, but they don’t break the bank either - it cost about 150 rubles per copy.

About 1,000 readers of the digital version. 100 copies were printed. 20 were left in the office, the rest were sold out during the day at two conferences. They sold on trust: they put stacks of books, hung a sign “Take now - pay later,” and instructions on how to pay were included in each book. About 50% of those who took it paid (the rest were freeloaders, and that’s okay). The circulation has dropped. But I had no goal of making money.”

One last piece of advice...

Let's say you're an aspiring author. You have written several stories, individual chapters, or even a full-fledged novel. Friends like your creativity. Perhaps you even posted your texts on the Internet, and you also got readers there. And one day you wanted to become a real writer: to see your brainchild published and dressed in a beautiful cover with your name on it. It is likely that such a dream has warmed your heart since childhood or adolescence. Or maybe it only appeared now, when you finished your first full-fledged work, received positive feedback not only from friends, but also from strangers - and so you realized that you know how to interest the reader. Or maybe while browsing the bestsellers section of your local bookstore you realized, “I can do that too!” This is how the decision to publish the book came.

Bitter truth

Before you start, remember one important thing. It may sound sad to you, but nevertheless it is true: large, venerable publishing houses will never undertake to print books for free by beginners and authors unknown to the general public. No matter how talented a beginner you are, or may seem to yourself, there is still no recipe for “How to publish a book in Russia for free.”

We have to accept it as a fact: publishing is a business like any other; no guaranteed profit - no cooperation. So if you are not yet a bestselling author, then there is no point in hoping to meet you with open arms.

Finding a genre and publishing house

However, no one forbids you to look for ways to publish your book in a major publishing house. Just find the one that suits your topic. Currently the most popular genres are:

1) fantasy;

2) women's novels;

3) detective stories about Russian realities;

4) cooking;

5) children's illustrated books;

6) manuals for self-development and self-education;

7) business management;

8) esotericism;

9) mysticism;

10) pseudo-historical novels with patriotic pathos.

When planning how to publish a book in Russia, remember: the less popular the genre in which you write, the longer it will take to find a suitable publishing house. The titles and contacts you need can be found on the Internet or by studying the assortment of bookstores - to be sure, you can use both methods.

Submit your manuscript

If the publisher’s website has a special form for authors, it must be filled out and submitted. You can also find and download a prospectus plan (basic information about the book and the author), fill it out once and then send it to all publishing houses that interest you. If you're looking to get your book published, this could be your chance.

Information about the author and the work must be accompanied by a synopsis ( short description) your work. It usually takes no more than two or three pages. The synopsis covers the entire work from beginning to end, demonstrating all the merits of the plot. Writing a good synopsis is quite difficult, so take this issue very seriously and read the recommendations of experienced writers.

You must also provide a sample of your work. Please do not send the entire manuscript, but only a fragment (no more than 20 pages). Review of each manuscript can take up to six months, so be patient if you are looking for ways to get your book published to please publishers. However, if you manage to do this, the wait, unfortunately, will not end there. Then you will need to wait patiently for your book to be published because the publisher has its own

We participate in the competition

They are held annually in various genres. Usually they are organized by literary magazines or various foundations, less often by publishing houses. Some events accept work for free, others for a small fee. Winning a competition is one way

Examples of annual competitions include: “Eurocon” and “Quasar” (works in the “fantasy” genre), “Written with a pen” (organized by the literary portal of the same name), “High Heels” (prose written by women) and various events from the Russian Writers' Union.

Choose a competition that best suits your writing genre. Read the terms and conditions carefully and follow them all exactly. Make sure that your work is original in its idea and characters, and also of high quality in terms of style and norms of the Russian language.

The works of the contestants are evaluated by a jury consisting, as a rule, of recognized writers, as well as representatives of publishing houses and magazines. Finalists usually receive the right to publish their work in a publishing house or literary magazine. Therefore, participation in a literary competition is an opportunity to attract the attention of competent and influential people.

For those who write for children and teenagers

“New Children's Book” - an annual competition from the Rosman publishing house - may be your chance if you are looking for how to publish a book for children and teenagers. Perhaps it is your work, now lying in obscurity on your computer’s hard drive, that in the future could become a competition laureate, be published in a well-known publishing house and get a real chance to gain access to an impressive number of young readers. Don't be afraid to look for a free way to publish a children's book written by you.

We publish at our own expense

Perhaps you are an extremely active person by nature and are not used to waiting for “miracles from heaven” in the form of a generous patron of the arts, a kind publisher, or your victory in a random literary competition. In this case it will be for you useful advice, how to publish your book with your own funds.

To begin with, this is an option for those who just want to see their favorite creation in the form of a full-fledged book. In this case, you can simply order from a printing house and pay out of your own pocket for the production of several copies: keep one or two for yourself, and distribute the rest to friends and family. But even something as seemingly simple as writing and publishing a book takes time. First of all, calculate how you can save money on preparing your book for printing.

Pre-press preparation

This process includes the following steps:

• editorial proofreading of the text (for errors and typos);
• layout (correct design of all spaces, intervals, paragraphs, headers and other graphic components);
• design of the cover of a future book;
• and its circulation (author, title, abstract and imprint).

Of course, all these operations can be performed at a printing house for an appropriate fee, but something can also be done on a home computer.

On the other hand, if you want the book to look truly real, it makes sense to entrust the entire process to professionals. Sometimes it is profitable to submit a manuscript for pre-press processing to one publishing house, and then print it elsewhere using ready-made layouts.

How much does the first edition cost?

So, you have prepared the layout of your book, and how much money will you have to invest in the release of your first, even small, edition? Its cost depends on the following parameters:

• how many author sheets are in the publication (1 = 40,000 characters with spaces; the value for your work can be viewed in Word);
• what circulation is planned;
• what type of cover (hard or soft; in the first case it will be more beautiful and practical, but more expensive).
• quality of paper for the text block and cover materials;
• the colorfulness of the future edition (if the cover is planned to be colored);
• how labor-intensive pre-press preparation will be (for example, the presence of illustrations).

As for the time for publication (including editing, design, layout and printing), on average this process takes from 3 to 6 months. If desired, you can reduce the waiting time, but this will mean additional costs.

Writer's earnings

And now - an option for those authors who plan to make money from writing. In general, this is fair: you worked honestly, wrote, invested yourself - and your work should be paid. Another question is how specific the book market is and how to sell a book in modern conditions. After all, paradoxically, now only the lazy don’t write, and there simply aren’t enough readers for everyone.

To take the first step, you need to promote your book. Don't expect others to do this for you - a publishing house or a literary agent - because, as we already found out at the very beginning, no one will publish and promote a little-known author for free. If you want to get a positive result, you will have to take on the matter yourself.

Selling a book

First, to be eligible to sell your published book, you need to obtain an International Standard ISBN number. This can be done at the Russian Book Chamber. You are required to pay a certain fee for the service, as well as submit documents giving you the right to carry out publishing activities.

Now you are ready to sell your book. You can come to a bookstore and try to interest the owner in order to sign a sales contract. When setting a price, assume that after percentage markups (from the publisher and the store), the book will cost twice as much as it cost to produce. For example, if it personally cost you 150 rubles to produce a circulation. for 1 copy, then on the shelf of a bookstore your creation will be exhibited at a price of 300 rubles. But in this case, how large is the percentage of people who will buy an unknown book? Therefore, before releasing your brainchild to the market, you need to make a name for yourself as an author. Next - how to publish an e-book.

Promotion on the Internet

The easiest way to achieve recognition for yourself and your book is in the open spaces World Wide Web or at least its Russian-speaking segment. There are several ways to publish an e-book. Among them:

• pure e-book;
• print on demand;
• audiobook.

To make your book popular enough to sell, you need to get it noticed. There are various ways to publish an e-book. One of them is placement in digital libraries, for example: Aldebaran, Fenzin, Litportal, FictionBook, Bookz.ru, etc. Some online libraries (Librusek, Litres) themselves find new authors, popular on the Internet, and post their work on their sites.

However, the main profit in distributing the electronic version of the book is not financial at all. The more downloads, the more readers will know about your book. And the higher the chances of selling it in paper version: you will earn a name for yourself, and you will have something to offer the publisher.

There is a misconception that a person will never buy a book in paper form that he has already downloaded electronically for free. In fact, readers are happy to purchase for their home library those works that they plan to re-read. The latter already depends on you as a skilled author.

If you're looking for a way to sell an e-book, look no further than print-on-demand technology. In this case, a fragment of the book is posted on the website (several chapters, a cover, etc.), and the interested reader pays for his copy, which is printed especially for him.

One way to sell an e-book is to make an audio version. This can be done both in the studio and at home. Audiobooks are most often distributed in online stores in the form of a paid download link. Audiobooks are in demand, but this market has not yet been fully developed, and therefore there is less competition here, which is a significant plus.

One day an idea popped into your mind. And you asked yourself: “How to publish your book?” If you are already interested in the answer to this question, then you are ready to set yourself the task of getting published. And once you put it in, you can find solutions.