News | Article Series | Publishing Awareness and Trends | Self-Publishing

If you are an author considering the independent route to publishing your works of fiction, memoir, poetry, etc., you cannot have failed to notice the abundance of publishing platforms today, offering you the opportunity to do just that. In fact you are probably inundated with offers from people who are willing to publish your book; provided you are willing to pay the price! But what is the price that you should be prepared to pay? The principle of let the buyer beware operates just as much in publishing as in any other business.

So while the opportunities are there to be grasped, planning and preparation are still key to your success. An article in the Huffington Post earlier this year identifies three phases in the publishing process (obstacles if you like) that the self-publishing author has to negotiate and overcome en route to success:

1. Write a good book

2. Publish it to a professional standard

3. Market it effectively

At The Manuscript Publisher we help you to do all three. But while these form the elements of a strategy, in order to work well, you need to integrate them. We work with you throughout the publishing process, helping you at each and every stage.

• We offer editing, proof-reading, even ghostwriting services that fine-tune your efforts and ideas to create work of quality and marketability. 

• Our skilled and professional designers know all about turning your manuscripts into books, using both print and digital media. 

• Our print management and price-brokering service helps you to produce print runs tailored to anticipated demand; giving you more books for your money without having to produce more books than you actually need.

To many people, Sales and Marketing might seem like the final stage of this process. Indeed, a lot of authors with publishing potential view marketing as something that they would rather leave to others – the so-called 'experts'! However, marketing is nothing more that taking a customer-centred view of that which is the product of your labour (in this case a book). And from this perspective, all of the previous phases and decision-making processes – from writing to a target audience, to choosing a cover that will appeal to that audience, etc. – are actually marketing considerations. It could even be said that marketing begins the moment that you decide you are going to 'write that book'. In taking a marketing approach, you will be guided and directed on questions of who, when, what, why.

At The Manuscript Publisher we are here for you at every stage, but we also help you on the important, final lap of your self-publishing journey. We help you to decide on a publishing platform (printed, non-printed or both). We work with you to build targeted and effective marketing and promotion campaigns, using traditional and online channels. We show you how to manage your web presence and utilise the value and advantages of social networking and social media. And we help you build on your success so that your next book will be eagerly anticipated.

From working with authors, writers, independent publishers over the years, we have learned that the essential first step is to cultivate an outlook that is based on a thorough understanding of the publishing process. In order to give upcoming authors and publishers the benefit of our insight and experience, we have be putting together a series of articles to sets forth our view on how to self-publish successfully under the title of A Philosophy of Self-Publishing.