Writing Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for the craft of professional writing, including fiction, non-fiction, technical, scholarly, and commercial writing. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
My friend and I have fully-fleshed out a comedic idea for a book, in a similar format to Jack Handy's "Deep Thoughts" (in that each page is a sentence or two). We would like accompanying illustrations for every couple of pages.
My question is how to go about getting this published? I'm completely new to publishing, so I'm not sure who I should talk to to communicate the idea. Is self-publishing or corporate publishing the best way to go about this?
Dean Smith, whom Shantnu Tiwari mentions in his/her answer, is an established writer with many books on the market published by established publishers. As a new writer, being published by a publishing house means that there was some selection process that filtered out the worst writers. As a reader, blindly grabbing a book from any of the big publishing houses means, that I will not be completely disappointed, even if it may not be my favourite book.
I travel a lot by train, and I often pick up books in train station book stores that I know nothing about, and it has always been an entertaining read.
Paying for and investing time in a self-published book is always a risk, and I have often been completely surprised by the total lack of storytelling ability, ideas and orthography. I only buy self-published books, if I know for sure that the book is good, and that is usually only the case with authors I know and like or if the reviews are overwhelmingly positive and written by reviewers I trust (such as in a newspaper of my choice).
I, personally, would always try publishing houses first, because they have the expertise to print the book well and market it, both of which I totally lack. Only if no-one wanted to publish it, would I self-publish.
Why not both?
Dean W Smith often recommends this. Self publish the book, and then send a copy to traditional publishers. Many legacy publishers now buy top selling Indie authors.
Selling to legacy publishers will be hard, unless you are already famous, or a best seller. If you publish it yourself, you can start making money immediately, and later on, may sell to a traditional publisher, if you get a good deal.
