Communications In Action - Publisher information

Communications In Action is a publisher of specialist, business oriented book titles. If you're interested in publishing your work with us then we will look at any new titles that are innovative and fit with the overall Communications In Action brand.

Books currently in print and available are:

NLP - Skills for Learning (ISBN 0-954-57480-X)

Six Questions (ISBN 0-954-57481-8)

Change Magic (ISBN 0-954-57482-6)

NLP in Business (ISBN 0-954-57483-4 to be allocated)

Many people ask "how do I get a book published" and it is easier than you might think... because publishing a book is the easy part.

Big publishers are very, very cautious. Or lazy, depending on which way you look at it. Rather than invest in an excellent book by an unknown author, they will go for a mediocre stocking filler with a celebrity's face on the front. Of course, it's not really the celebrity's face, just a picture of it.

This risk aversion is based on a stone age business model, where the publisher would need to print thousands of copies of a book, and if they didn't sell they were left with a stockpile that they could only dispose of via the bargain basement bookshops.

Today's publishing industry uses a service called print on demand, where they print one book at a time. Hang on - if they don't need to invest in stock, why are they still so risk averse? Because that's all they know.

One more important thing about big publishers is that you might think that once they have taken on your book, they will promote it and you'll retire to the Bahamas. Not so - they see promotion as the author's job. So writing the book is not enough, they expect you to sell the thing too!

You might be thinking what I thought a couple of years ago - if they put up barriers to entry, and I still have to do all the work, and they keep the majority of the sales margin, what's to stop me doing it myself?

The answer is that in order for you to set yourself up as a publisher, write, print, market and distribute your own books, you have to go through a formal process and spend some money. Already you might be put off by thoughts of endless red tape and blank cheques. Fear not. You can be in business after filling out 3 forms and spending less than £100.

Lots of small publishers can help you with this, because for an author they still make it out to be a black art, and not surprisingly they can help you for a modest fee.

I hate black arts. I believe that knowledge is inherently free, so here it is:

First, visit the ISBN agency, whitaker www.whitaker.co.uk AKA Bookdata www.bookdata.com and request the forms to register as a publisher. When you do this, you get a block of 10 ISBN numbers which costs you about £70.

When you write your book and get it printed, you just put the ISBN number and barcode on the back cover, submit a form to Bookdata and you're done.

Once the ISBN number is registered, anyone can order your book from any bookshop, and the orders will come straight to you.

You can get your book printed at your local printers, as I did for the first few years, or you can go straight for the print on demand service run by companies such as Antony Rowe www.antonyrowe.co.uk and Lightning Source.

Anthony Rowe will set up a title for about £100 depending on how many revisions you make, and once it's on their system you can have as many copies as you want. They charge £15 for delivery, so I normally order about 60 at a time. Ask them for an information pack and you'll get an excellent sample book and lots of info on services and pricing. The staff there are very helpful too.

What about distribution though? Well, it just happens that Antony Rowe are next door to Gardners Books www.gardners.com - the UK's largest wholesaler and distributor. For a discount of about 35%, they will wholesale your book through all the High Street and online retailers, so anyone can go into any bookshop, buy your book and you don't see the transaction until you get a report at the end of each month.

As I said earlier, publishing is the easy part, because the job of the publisher is to take your book, print it and put it on a shelf. The print on demand service takes all the financial risk out of that, lowering the barrier to entry for new authors and self-publishers.

So what is the hard part? Marketing, of course. Letting people know that your book exists and that they need to buy it. What you need is a channel to market - a means to tell people about your book. You can speak at conferences, run articles in magazines, resell it via specialist retailers and so on. That part is down to you, I'm afraid.

Just remember - if someone else can do it, so can you.

We are interested in publishing new books from other authors, just remember that you have to do most of the marketing yourself! If getting your book into print seems like too much trouble, and if your book fits with our current titles, then we would be interested to hear from you.

Ascent
Excellerate
Change Magic
NLP in Business
The Skills Network

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