How to Get Your Novel Published - Options

Once you've written "The End" on your manuscript, you feel an enormous sense of achievement - and then you discover the hard slog is still ahead of you. Now you have to get it published! Your first step is to understand what your options are - and it's very easy to be tempted by companies offering you the chance to publish your own book for nothing. But before you take the plunge, it's worth examining all the alternatives.

There are five main avenues to getting published. The publishers like to call themselves all kinds of fancy names (especially if they're trying to sell you a debatable service), but fundamentally they all fall into one of the following categories:

• Mainstream Publishers
• Small presses
• Online (e-publishing)
• Print on demand (POD)
• Vanity Presses

99.9% of all the books you see in your High Street bookstore were published by mainstream publishers - so clearly, that's the best option. However, competition is so fierce, most mainstream pubs won't accept submissions direct from authors any more - they're just too snowed under. If you want to submit to a mainstream publisher, you need to get yourself an agent - and that's almost as difficult! Even if you find an agent and submit your work, it can take months or even years to get a response.

No wonder writers turn in frustration to other options.

Small independent publishers are a half-way house between the big publishing behemoths and self-publishing. You need to approach them with caution, because vanity presses often masquerade as boutique publishing houses.

A small press may ask you to contribute to the cost of printing, and will certainly expect you to invest substantial time and money in marketing. In that regard, there may not seem to be much difference between a small publishing house and a vanity press - but there's a huge difference.

The difference is that the fee you pay a vanity press more than covers their costs. Once your books have been delivered to you, they couldn't care less what happens - they've already made their profit, thank you!

A genuine small publishing house takes some of the risk with you. If they ask for money for printing, it won't even cover their costs. If they ask you for marketing funds, they'll spell out exactly what the campaign will involve - although it's more likely they'll tell you what to do so you can manage it yourself. They're relying on your success to make their profit, so they'll stick with you.

An example of a small press is ClearView Press run by Michael Ray King.

Both e-publishers and Print on Demand (POD) publishers sell books online.

The difference is in the delivery - if customers order your book from an e-book website, they'll get a soft copy, downloadable book. If they order your book from a POD website, they'll receive a traditional hard-copy book in the mail. Some publishers offer both - and since some people still prefer to hold a real book in their hands, I'd always recommend going for the combined offering if you can.

The traditional way to self-publish is with a vanity press. Vanity presses never call themselves that, of course, because they have a (thoroughly deserved) reputation as rip-off merchants. Instead they may use a variety of names, the latest being "subsidy publisher".

These presses, whatever they promise (and they often promise a lot) are nothing more than printers. You pay them to print a few hundred (or a few thousand) copies of your book. Some vanity presses try to disguise this fact by saying the printing is free, but you have to pay for "editing" or "marketing".  In reality, any editing or marketing they do is sketchy at best, and the fee simply pays the printing costs.

If you just want to get your book printed, pull out the Yellow Pages and ring around some local printers. Chances are they'll do your job cheaper. But the question is, why would you print thousands of copies of your book before you have a single buyer? How are you going to sell all those books you'll have sitting in your garage?

You'll be much better off with a small publisher or POD publishing.

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Text copyright Marisa Wright. Photo by Francis Storr