Like your favorite writer, you have a story. You may have kept a journal or written it down in note form. Now you’re ready to publish. If you want it done right — great cover, no mistakes or typos, polished and grammatically correct, an original voice — you’re looking at six months of back and forth hard, but ultimately, gratifying work.

Otherwise… Otherwise, it’s not worth doing. That’s right, if it’s a vanity project that you just want to see completed any old which way, then it probably means you don’t care what it looks and reads like. If that’s the case, don’t count on sales because books that aren’t done right don’t sell. So what? you say. So decide what your goals are at the beginning, before you get locked into a project that has little chance of success.

Research shows that books without professional editing or professional covers do not sell. Readers are immediately turned off. Why is this? Here’s what the research shows.

1. Self-published writers are getting better and better at producing quality books, exactly the approach that scares the vanity publishing houses. Writers now understand these so-called publishers that require you to pay them, are really only middlemen who add little to no value to your project. In fact, they don’t even read your manuscript. Send them pages from the telephone book; they’ll put your name on it and print it. Rule 1: You should never pay any one that does not add value, that does not assure you the largest share of the sales receipts.
2. More books are being self-published, which means that readers form their purchasing opinions based on word-of-mouth: Amazon reviews, Goodreads buzz, Twitter, Facebook, etc. So, if someone buys a book that's riddled with errors, the word goes out and the title is dead from the get-go. Covers are reduced to 2-inch high thumbnails; unprofessional covers don’t stand a chance. Rule 2: Promoting your book is even harder than writing it.

This chart should guide your approach to writing. Notice how the curve starts to climb when you reach the top 500 writers. From 500 to 58,000 sales are not worth the effort most people put into writing. Nevertheless, failure to observe best practices — all the prerequisites mentioned above — guarantees your book’s failure. There’s not one instance of a badly produced book succeeding. A well-produced, cleverly promoted (something we excel at; something the vanity presses don’t offer) stands a chance of succeeding.

If you understand our approach — quality production, best practices, clever promotion — email us and we’ll discuss your project. Be sure to include your phone number in the email so we can come right to the point (no forms to fill out, no call backs that never come).