Evan Carmichael outlines four ways to get a book published: submit directly to publishers, hire a literary agent, write a manuscript that stands out, or build an audience on YouTube or social media before finishing. Publishers want proof you have readers waiting.
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How to find a publisher for your book. So I got a great question from one of my readers, Jerry, love you guys, who wrote in to say, "Any advice on how to find someone to publish a book? Do you have any videos on this? Just found out about you a couple days. Wow, your videos are amazing. Jerry Clark III." Thank you for that compliment, Jerry. Buttering up always gets you onto the show, so thank you for that. This is a great question and one that a lot of people want answered, right? A lot of people have a book idea, they want to get it out there, they want somebody to help them market it. You realize that you may be a great writer but not great at everything else around it. You just want to focus on what you do best. So getting a book deal is becoming more and more difficult. The publishing industry is hurting. They're having a hard time keeping up with online, and I wanted to share my 4 tips for you to get your book published. Number 1 is go direct, and going direct is basically finding all the publishers that publish books, that accept books, and writing to them. And you have an overview of what your book is all about, and you write into them. There's usually a general email address you can connect with them. Sometimes they have limited dates, so they're only accepting from this date to this date, and they're full up on authors. And other times they, they're just always open. They say, hey, shoot us your proposal. There aren't many publishers who, who don't accept in any format. But now remember, you're gonna go up against everybody else who's doing the exact same thing. So that, that's your bare basics entry point, is just create an overview of your book and emailing or mailing out to all the publishers that you can find. Number 2 is using an agent. And with a literary agent, what they do is dramatically improve the chance of you getting your deal. They'll look over your proposal. They will give you feedback, suggestions, how to tweak your proposal. If you've never done it before, and I'm going through this process right now, it's totally foreign, it's totally new, and I'm trusting the people who had experience in getting big books out and published. And so I'm leaning on their advice to help get me that deal. Now they take a cut of whatever you make. Usually you don't pay a literary agent fee, but they take a cut of whatever deal they land for you. And so, are you willing to give up a percentage of whatever, you know, advance you get in return for getting an increased chance of getting the book deal? For me, it's worth it. You know, I don't want to do all that work. I don't want to be emailing all the publishers and trying to figure it out. I'd rather go with an expert and paying them for that expertise. Number 3 is write great copy. And this This is so, so, so, so important because so many books are just not that great. They're okay, they're good, but they're not great. And if you're a first-time author and you want to stand out and you want to get noticed, the copy has to be great. It has to scream off the page. It's got to be something I look at, I have to keep reading. It's a page-turner, right? Is your book actually that Great. And, you know, show it to friends and show it to family and show it to complete strangers and get their feedback on it. And it should be something that is your life's work. It should be something that you want to show to your grandkids when it's done. It's got to be that important, right? It's got to be at that level, because if it's not, you're up against so many people that your chances of being picked up are pretty low. And if you look at even some of the most successful books, you look at their history and how they started, even those, even though they were great page-turners, they still got rejected dozens and dozens of times. So you have to make sure that your book is great. And everybody's gonna say, "My book is great." "Yeah, my book is great." So everybody's saying that, right? Everybody feels the same way that you do, that your book is great. So you've gotta take it up a level. It's gotta be your life's work. If you only had to write one book ever in your life, this is it, and it's gotta be amazing. So you gotta pour your heart, soul, blood, sweat, tears, everything into that book for it to really jump off at me and help you stand out from a proposal of one out of thousands that are coming in. And number 4 is build momentum. The biggest issue now in the publishing industry is being able to sell these books. Right, it's easy to produce a book, it's getting it sold. And so what they want to see more and more, especially from first-time authors, is that you have an audience of some kind. You want to build momentum. Most authors don't. So even if you have a great book idea, the fact that you have no audience to sell to once it's out is going to limit your chances of getting a deal. So what you want to do is start now. Start building a YouTube audience, start building a Facebook audience, start building a Twitter audience, because if you do that You're already ahead of most of the other authors. It gives you a platform. The publishers, the literary agents are gonna ask you, what is your platform? So they wanna know, are you an expert? Have you gone on radio and TV? Do you have a YouTube show? Do you have people who follow you on all the social media networks? Do you have a popular website? If you don't, it's gonna really limit your results. So start working on those things now. And what I do is think about What is the core message of your books? You know, what is the one word that defines who you are? What's the value that you want people to exude? What am I going to learn from reading your book? How is it going to change me? And then create content around that. So the content doesn't all have to be about your book, but share with me things that make me feel something, that are related to your core philosophy, your core value, your one word. And people will gravitate towards that. And when your book is ready to be launched, now you have an audience to market to. So you gotta build momentum and not just rely on the publisher to do everything for you. So in summary, how to get your book published: number 1, go direct; number 2, use an agent; number 3, write great copy; number 4, build momentum and believe. It's a great question, Jerry. If you have something more specific you want advice on, I'm going through this this process right now, so I'm happy to help answer it for you. For those of you watching, you like this video, you can subscribe to the channel to see more just like it. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you soon. Every week I share my best information to help you fuel your business forward in my newsletter. Check it out below. Hi, I'm Jason J. Ros Fonseca of RiseOnline.com, and I want to say Evan Carmichael's newsletter is consistent fun, inspiring, and it's the only newsletter I prioritize and look forward to. Period.
