Today, with the high demand for publishing companies, the popularity of e-books, and the advanced software , book publishing has never been easier. This, however, requires creative and entrepreneurial experience.
Book publishing can be a profitable business if you have the patience to build a coherent book catalog, the time and money to start making the first investments.
What is your idea
The first thing you have to do is be clear about what kind of publisher you want to create and what kind of books you want to publish. That is, answer these questions:
- Who would be the target audience?
- In which country or countries would you sell the books?
- What genres would you publish?
- In what language or languages would you publish?
- Would you publish only new authors or also authors already published abroad?
- How would your editorial be different?
- What is your goal with this editorial?
This last question is extremely important, since it will also depend on what you want to achieve . If you just want to start a publishing company for pleasure, or even in a way as a hobby , it will not be necessary for you to consider and study these types of issues so determinedly. You can simply go posting what you want and how you want. Of course, doing this you would need a lot of luck for the business or hobby to be profitable for you.
Analyze the competition
Once you are clear about your editorial idea, touch the second step: analyze the competition. This is analyzing publishers who have an idea similar to yours. What you will have to check is:
- How do they sell the books?
- Who is your target audience?
- Do you have a website and social networks?
- Are they on all social networks? No? Because?
- Do they respond to users on the networks? How do they do that?
- What is your editorial design strategy?
- What is your publishing business strategy?
- Do you send books home?
- How do you have your website set up?
- How are your logos?
- Do they have slogans? Which are?
- How often do they post?
- How many books do you publish per year?
- In which bookstores do your books appear?
- Do you also sell online?
All these questions will be useful for us to know how to create our own editorial. The ideal when doing this type of analysis is to think about what the competition is missing or what they fail at , and what you could contribute differently. At this point it can also help you to do a market study to find out what your target audience wants.
Choosing a name for your company
Once you are clear about the above, you will need a name for your editorial . This is very important, since choosing a name is not easy at all. In addition, there are more and more independent publishers and companies, with which the choice of the name is something that is more and more limited. Keep in mind that the name you choose will be part of your brand or brand , so do not choose just any name.
We recommend that, if you do not know which name to choose, you hire a naming company . Naming companies are dedicated to precisely this, to analyze all the possible names that would best fit your business based on several qualifying rounds. Think that if the issue of the name was neither so complicated nor so important, there would be no professionals or companies that are exclusively dedicated to this.
Register the name of the publisher
Once you have the name clear (and that it is available, of course), touch, without fail, to register the name of the publisher. To do this you must contact the association that corresponds to your country . Once this is done, you must wait at least 4 months until you can start up your business and website.
You also have the option of choosing a name that they already have registered in their database, but that is not in use. In this way you would only have to buy it and you could instantly start setting up your business. It is another possibility, but if you want to do things right, we do not recommend it.
It is very important that you know, before hand, that if you are two or more people in charge of the project, at least one of them will have to register as a freelancer . If you will do it by yourself, you will have to register anyway.
publishing business plan
Once you have done the previous step and are clear about the first one, we recommend that you start making a publishing business plan . That is to say:
- Think about what kind of books you will publish.
- Think about marketing strategies .
- Consider the routes of distribution.
- Think about how to get the money needed to start the project.
To carry out a business plan correctly it is also necessary that you have a cash flow . A cash flow is a document that is usually done in an Excel document. It tries to calculate what you will have to invest for each book you publish and what you will possibly earn. This is very important so as not to invest in vain and end up losing money, instead of earning it.
Keep in mind that the first three years will be for investment only . You won’t see any real earnings until after three years of editorial work. We do not know why this is so, but the truth is that it is a formula that is always repeated.
Create an editorial logo
Once you know the name and have a clear brand strategy or publishing business plan, it is time to choose a logo for your publishing house. We recommend that you go to a professional graphic designer for this point, since a logo is not as simple as it seems: it must convey many things, and it is not easy to do it if you do not dedicate yourself to it.
We also recommend that you think about the logo at this point and not before because it could be a bit disastrous and incoherent without knowing the name, or the books you would sell, or what your brand would be (by brand we mean everything, your editorial strategy , your editorial voice… everything).
Despite the fact that there are many publishers that do not give importance to the name or the process to follow to create a publisher, it is best that you do. Most of these publishers end up achieving great success or not, or going under in a short time.
Design the website and make a presence on social networks
It is important that, once you have the logo, you begin to disseminate your editorial on social networks . You do not need to have the website ready yet for it. Nor is it necessary that you be on all social networks , but you must be yes or yes on Facebook and Twitter. By doing this your future clients will begin to know you.
To create the web page, you can build it from scratch or take a WordPress template. However, it will always look more professional if you create it from scratch. For this a web designer can help you .
hire staff
You may not be able to afford this at first, but it is important that you at least know what kind of positions would need to be filled in a publishing house :
- Concealers.
- Makers.
- Designers.
- Publishers.
- Commercial.
- translators.
- Illustrator.
- professional readers.
However, we know that at the beginning you will most likely have to play “conductor” , that is, assume all those editorial positions yourself.
Create other types of editorials
Perhaps you are thinking of setting up a self-publishing editorial or a virtual or digital editorial. To create one of these publishers you must follow the same steps as to create an independent publisher: search for a name, register it, analyze the competition, create a website, broadcast on social networks…
In any case, the self-publishing publisher and the digital publisher differ in a couple of things:
Create self-publishing editorial
The good thing about a self-publishing publisher is that you don’t need to have a cheap cushion to get started. This is truly one of the most profitable businesses out there, since you receive the money first and then invest it.
In other words, with the money that the client pays for the publication of his book, you can pay the necessary professionals to carry out all the necessary editing processes: proofreading, layout, cover design… There are companies that are You can resort to these professionals to carry out these tasks in a timely manner.
Set up digital editorial
In the case of the digital publisher, it has the advantage that you would save many costs, such as printing and physical distribution (of which, between the distributor and the bookseller, they take 55% of the book’s profits, leaving the Remaining 45% to distribute between the author, the editor, the commercial, the proofreader, the designer, the layout artist…).
In addition, ebooks will always be present on the Internet , even if nobody buys them . In other words: with digital books they can only win. While with paper books this is more delicate, since if a book does not sell, the bookstores would withdraw the copies and return them to the publisher, since there are currently many books that are published, they cannot have all of them exposed and Furthermore, a bookstore has limited space, even your warehouse has limited space.
Therefore, setting up a book company in ebook format could also be cheaper than a paper book publisher. However, today, it is said that they continue to sell more paper books than ebooks .
You also have the option of setting up a paper publishing house that includes the possibility of self-publishing and of acquiring the books in digital format. In fact, if you set up a paper publisher, you must include the option to buy the books in ebook yes or yes.
If you want to read more articles similar to How to create a publishing house – everything you need to know , we recommend that you enter our Economy and business category .
Tips
- Create a cover letter for booksellers. That will make them more predisposed to sell your books.
- Contact bloggers and send them free copies of your books for review on their blogs.
- Do the same with the media. It is very important that your book echoes on the Internet.
- Know the laws of publishing so as not to breach them at any time, especially when making contracts.
- Make contacts. Contacts can open many doors for you, and in the publishing world they are very necessary.