These publishers pay for all the editing, the design, layout, printing, and promotion. They take on all the risk and they will pay you a royalty for the copies they sell. You won't have very much say in how the book looks, what it sells for, or where it sells.

Most publishers work on books 12-18 months in advance of their publication. Most publishers only look at manuscripts that come to them from literary agents.

What types of Publishers are there?

• Trade and commercial publishers
• Self Publishers
• Subsidy
• Vanity

Trade and Commercial Publishers

• Trade: books that sell mainly through bookshops: novels, biographies, coffee-table picture books, children's books. Sales at least 5000 copies.
• Schools: primary and secondary educational markets; readers, maths and activities books. Sales at least 3000 copies.
• Tertiary / academic presses for course books for university level studies plus books of serious scholarly interest. Sales at least 1500 copies.
• Professional / reference publishers offer business books, manuals, and so on. Sales at least 5000 copies.

Self Publishers

Self-publishing the right number of books makes you a successful small business person. Only print twice as many copies as you know you can sell. Reprint with the profits when you sell all your first print run.

This website provides evidence of just how successful and rewarding it can be to publish your own book. We have over 1000 delighted authors who have published with us, including first-time author Melanie Williams of Sydney:

• 'Please accept my thanks for all your advice and for making this project of mine so simple and painless to accomplish.'

And in November 07 from Helen Menzies:
"This is BY FAR the best way to publish, and of course association with Wild and Woolley has such cachet."

Her new book titled The Survivors' Affair may be ordered on line here. http://www.wildandwoolley.com.au/bookshop?2610

We can put one of our imprints on the title page and spine of your book: Books & Writers, Fast Books, Buffaroo Books, or Wild & Woolley.

Subsidy Publishers

• Expensive and elaborate corporate history hardcovers are usually well subsidised but will carry a respectable trade publisher's imprint. Costs in excess of $75,000
• Sporting clubs. Costs in excess of $35,000

Vanity Publishers

According to the Sun-Herald newspaper: 'Book publishing scams in London and New Zealand have left many Australians thousands of dollars out of pocket. David McAlpine, 78, lost about $12,000 after he approached British vanity publishing outfit Avon Books to publish his first novel. 'They were crooks from start to finish,' Mr McAlpine said. All he has to show for his money is six copies of his book.

''The Australian Society of Authors has advised that it does not recommend members use Minerva UK. The society says that while the publisher might say it publishes only quality manuscripts, in practice this is not the case. The society agrees that self-publishing can be a viable option for authors but recommends self-publishers in Australia such as Fast Books.' (New Writers News)

Vanity publishers include Minerva and Athena Press (what about the similar approach to imprint names...) of the UK.

Do Plenty of Research

Look to see if there are other books in the same field and if so, when and where they were published. You can go to references such as library catalogues, books in print references, search engines on the internet, and newspaper periodical indexes to see what books have been reviewed and to find out their publishers.

This research will help you save money and time. There's little point in submitting poetry to a medical textbook publisher.

Imagine what your market will be: the closer the market is to your home base, the less it will cost to get to that market. Your market may start with your family, friends, work colleagues, club, and neighbours.

If you self-publish, it's easy and inexpensive to sell your book to every person in your street, but it's much more expensive to try to sell to the whole world.

• Did you know that Peter Carey, prize winning author, has two manuscripts - his third and fourth novels - that have never been published? Are they any good? Who knows. He's sold the original manuscripts to a library as part of an archive worth about $80,000.

Books make great gifts at these times

Books sell especially well up to and during these annual events:

• Christmas: for gifts, for reading over the holidays
• Father's Day: gifts for dad
• Mother's Day: gifts for mum

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