Getting Your Book Published For Dummies

There’s never been a better time to be an author. Books like the Harry Potter series create a media phenomenon, with people lining up and camping outside bookstores to purchase newly released titles. Yet book sales overall – not just those of mega-sellers – are on the rise, as more and more people seek knowledge and entertainment through reading. The Library of Congress currently registers about 60,000 new titles for copyright each year. 60,000 books by 60,000 authors. Imagine yourself as one.

Getting Your Book Published For Dummies is your complete guide to realizing whatever gem of an idea you’ve been carrying with you. If you’ve ever thought, “this would make a really good book,” be it the next great American novel or a guide to naming babies, here’s your chance to put pen to paper and find out! Written from both sides of the editor’s desk – by a widely published writer and a HarperCollins veteran publisher – this guide puts in your hand the advice you need to:

• Pick an idea
• Approach the publisher
• Craft proposals and queries
• Work with agents, or act as your own
• Self-publish
• Negotiate a contract
• Create the actual book
• Sell your published book

Full of examples, proposals, query letters, and war stories drawn from the authors’ extensive experience, Getting Your Book Published For Dummies shows you how to clear all the hurdles faced by today’s writers – freeing up precious time for you to refine your manuscript. You’ll get the inside scoop on:

• Titling your book
• Major publishers, smaller houses, niche publishers, university presses, and spiritual and religious publishers
• The 12 elements of a successful nonfiction proposal
• How editors read queries
• Submitting fiction
• Publishing outside the box
• And much more

Getting Your Book Published For Dummies is the clear, A-Z handbook that makes the entire process  plain and practicable. You don’t need to be a celebrity. You don’t need to be some kind of publishing insider. All you need to do is write.

Consider this friendly guide your tool of the publishing industry—from understanding the business and its players to the art of negotiating advances, options, and rights. Take advantage of industry insider Sarah Parsons Zackheim's decades of experience and find out how to refine your book idea, submit winning queries, get an agent, and more.

Discover how to:

• Choose a book idea
• Get inspired to write
• Find a market for your work
• Choose a publisher
• Act as your own agent
• Negotiate your contract
• Self-publish your book on the Web

About the Authors:

Sarah Parsons Zackheim worked in book publishing for nearly a decade before coming a weekly published freelance writer. Her tenure at several New York publishing firms, including Doubleday, New York Times Books, and William Morrow, provided invaluable insights as to exactly what publishers look in for submission materials. Ms. Zackheim has written four books as well as numerous articles.

Adrian Zackheim is currently Associate Publisher of the General Books Group at HarperCollins Publishers and Editor in Chief of HarperInformation. He began his publishing career in the promotion department at G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1975 and since then has worked as an editor of fiction and nonfiction at St. Martin's Press, Doubleday, William Morrow, and HarperCollins.

Sarah Parsons Zackheim has worked at William Morrow, Doubleday, and New York Times Books. She is the author or coauthor of three books, including Dress Your House For Success.