Publishing a martial arts book??

[IronFist]

So i had an offer to buy the rights to my wooden dummy book (link in sig) which i have been selling independently for 7 years now, and it made me think...

instead of doing that, if i wanted to get it published for real (like by an actual publishing company), how would i go about doing that? Anyone have any contacts in the (martial arts) publishing world or anything? Would i just email companies and ask if they were interested or what? i'm not sure how the process works.

Thanks

[lkfmdc]

how are you selling it now? Why not do an "on demand" book on one of the MANY sites doing this now?

[David Jamieson]

submit a copyrighted manuscript to the major publishing houses.

you can also go the route of vanity publishing whereby you print your own run by using someone else's press and binding services.

This is actually quite common these days and there are many vanity publications now.

To copyright anything at a basic level, mail yourself the manuscript and keep it sealed in the postmarked envelop in which you sent it. This is an accepted method of proof of rights on any written or recorded works. Alternately, you can have the work confirmed by a notary public or lawyer and that also serves as a basic copyright.

[MasterKiller]

So i had an offer to buy the rights to my wooden dummy book (link in sig) which i have been selling independently for 7 years now, and it made me think...

instead of doing that, if i wanted to get it published for real (like by an actual publishing company), how would i go about doing that? Anyone have any contacts in the (martial arts) publishing world or anything? Would i just email companies and ask if they were interested or what? i'm not sure how the process works.

Thanks

The majority of martial arts books are self-published. You'll be hard-pressed to find a publisher.

If you want to try, though, do some research to find which publishers might be interested in the book, then find out what their submission guidelines are.

If you are serious, buy the latest edition of the Writer's Guide to Agents, Editors and Publishers. Should be on Amazon.


Depending on the publisher, you may need to send a few sample chapters with a query letter, or actually include the whole manuscript. Each publisher has it's own guidelines, and if you don't follow them, your book will end up in the trash can.

Also, if you want the manuscripts back if they get rejected, you have to include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Mailing expenses can add up.

[Drake]

Is Unique Publications still around and in business? I think GM went through them years ago.

[karateguy]

check with amazon, you can self-publish with them.. they even assist with artwork

[IronFist]

how are you selling it now? Why not do an "on demand" book on one of the MANY sites doing this now?

I print and bind them myself now. It costs like $5 per book.

Most of the DIY places I've seen online would end up costing me more than that per book.

I'd like to make the entire process as hands-off for me as possible which is why if a company wanted to publish and sell it and send me royalty checks that would be awesome.

I'd rather do that than sell the rights to it for a lump sum just because it would be cool to keep my name on it or whatever. Besides, I like passive income. I'd rather make a few thousand per year for the rest of my life than a little bit more only once.


submit a copyrighted manuscript to the major publishing houses.

you can also go the route of vanity publishing whereby you print your own run by using someone else's press and binding services.

This is actually quite common these days and there are many vanity publications now.

To copyright anything at a basic level, mail yourself the manuscript and keep it sealed in the postmarked envelop in which you sent it. This is an accepted method of proof of rights on any written or recorded works. Alternately, you can have the work confirmed by a notary public or lawyer and that also serves as a basic copyright.

I read on a copyright website that that "poor man's copyright" actually doesn't hold up in court. It's already copyrighted anyway tho so it doesn't matter :D

[lkfmdc]

I print and bind them myself now. It costs like $5 per book.

Most of the DIY places I've seen online would end up costing me more than that per book.

I'd like to make the entire process as hands-off for me as possible which is why if a company wanted to publish and sell it and send me royalty checks that would be awesome.

I'd rather do that than sell the rights to it for a lump sum just because it would be cool to keep my name on it or whatever. Besides, I like passive income. I'd rather make a few thousand per year for the rest of my life than a little bit more only once.





"on demand" doesn't cost you ANYTHING. If you sell something, you and to company split the profits. And you dont have to do a thing except create the original product

Most big companies will give you a moderate up front and the "royalties" will be few and far between after that

[cerebus]

"on demand" doesn't cost you ANYTHING. If you sell something, you and to company split the profits. And you dont have to do a thing except create the original product

Most big companies will give you a moderate up front and the "royalties" will be few and far between after that

Yup! Check out Lulu.com. Won't cost you a penny. ;)

[SPJ]

1. self publishing, you have to pay for your own marketing or running ads.

you have to promote your books yourself, such as touring and signing, or seminars workshops etc.

2. ask if a publisher that will publish your manuscript. then the publisher will cover your marketing and promoting your book for you. but they take a bigger cut from the sale.

---

anyway, as a authour, just like a trademark, you have to constantly promote yourself, it is a lifetime thing.

--

best of luck, which ever route you will embark on.

and what the other posters said.

:cool:

[IronFist]

"on demand" doesn't cost you ANYTHING. If you sell something, you and to company split the profits. And you dont have to do a thing except create the original product

See, that's the thing tho. I sell it for $40. So why would I split it and only make $20 per sale when I can keep printing and binding it myself and make around $35 per sale?

The only way I would go with a publishing company like that is if they would also promote the hell out of it so that enough copies would be sold that I would make more (net) than I make now.

Promoting and advertising sucks, but in the last year I've gotten to the first page of google for some keywords.


Most big companies will give you a moderate up front and the "royalties" will be few and far between after that

That's fine tho, even if I made only a few bucks per sale cuz I'd still get my name on it and be able to go to the book store and say "check it out, I wrote this book."

[IronFist]

1. self publishing, you have to pay for your own marketing or running ads.

you have to promote your books yourself, such as touring and signing, or seminars workshops etc.

2. ask if a publisher that will publish your manuscript. then the publisher will cover your marketing and promoting your book for you. but they take a bigger cut from the sale.

---

anyway, as a authour, just like a trademark, you have to constantly promote yourself, it is a lifetime thing.

--

best of luck, which ever route you will embark on.

and what the other posters said.

:cool:

Yup, that's why I want to get some big company to do it so I don't have to promote it myself anymore.


The other option is to make it an ebook and then my cost would be $0, but then it would be on torrent sites and everyone would be emailing it to their friends and I'd probably only ever sell one copy :P That's why in 7 years I've never, ever released an electronic copy. The only way anyone will get an electronic copy is to buy the rights from me for five figures (that's five figures before the decimal, lol) :D

[cerebus]

Yup, that's why I want to get some big company to do it so I don't have to promote it myself anymore.


The other option is to make it an ebook and then my cost would be $0, but then it would be on torrent sites and everyone would be emailing it to their friends and I'd probably only ever sell one copy :P That's why in 7 years I've never, ever released an electronic copy. The only way anyone will get an electronic copy is to buy the rights from me for five figures (that's five figures before the decimal, lol) :D

Heh, heh. Five figures? Good luck with that. You basically have to decide what you want, the money, or your name on a book put out by a big-time publisher.

If you're more into the money, self-publishing will make you more. It's also more work on your part though. From my own research, many big publishers will simply give you around 50 cents per copy for each book they sell, period.

Big money only comes from best-selling novels. Decent money comes from lesser novels. Martial arts instructional manuals.... you won't make alot this way...

[dimethylsea]

Yup, that's why I want to get some big company to do it so I don't have to promote it myself anymore.


The other option is to make it an ebook and then my cost would be $0, but then it would be on torrent sites and everyone would be emailing it to their friends and I'd probably only ever sell one copy :P That's why in 7 years I've never, ever released an electronic copy. The only way anyone will get an electronic copy is to buy the rights from me for five figures (that's five figures before the decimal, lol) :D

I would suggest Createspace (which is a division of Amazon.com). If you publish through them you can get an ISBN and a listing in the amazon.com website. lkfmdc has it right.

What is often a good trick is to set the purchase price on Amazon.com (you determine this) rather higher than your own website purchase price. That way people "in the know" have an incentive to purchase from you directly, but you still get the benefits of an ISBN, a listing on amazon.com etc.

Createspace or "on-demand" publishing is wonderful for "vanity publishing" (which is what most martial arts books are basically), since they will print, wrap, package and drop-ship your merchandise for you. No shipping department in your living room. And the best part of it is.. once your manuscript is in their hard drive you are basically selling books that don't exist until AFTER you've gotten your cheddar.

Good luck!

[LSWCTN1]

Paul H. Crompton
Paul Crompton
94 Felsham Road
SW151DQ Putney, London
United Kingdom

00 44 2087801063

cromptonph@aol.com

this guy published Joseph Chengs book on the wooden dummy, he may be able to help, or at least let you know what you should be receiving in royalties

[Wong Ying Home]

I would not use Paul Crompton in a Million years

[LSWCTN1]

I would not use Paul Crompton in a Million years

care to elaborate? :confused:

[Lee Chiang Po]

I have several ebooks that I sell and I use a program that will prevent people from emailing it to friends. They pay you, and you email it to them. They can not email it to anyone. It is coded from there on out. They have to come to his house and read it off his computer. If you allowed him to print it, he will not pass it around to many people. If you have it out there where people know about it you can make some seriously nasty money. Have you ever looked to see how many people access these gung fu sites on utube and other sites on the internet? There is a huge market for this stuff. I used to print and make up leather bound as well as paper back books, made a lot of bucks doing that too. But, it is a lot of work and I just don't see doing that as I am seriously retired now. Ebooks would be the best way to go. On the other hand, thousands of $20 books is a lot more than a hand full of $40 books now and then. And they do all the work. You need to build a web site and link it to just about everything gung fu. You will sell some books. That would be Books on demand. Some of them will print the product, bind it, and then drop ship to your customer with your company name and address on it. The customer pays up first, and you pay up when you order the books. They print and ship and you never do anything but go to the bank.

[IronFist]

I have several ebooks that I sell and I use a program that will prevent people from emailing it to friends. They pay you, and you email it to them. They can not email it to anyone. It is coded from there on out. They have to come to his house and read it off his computer.

Can you tell me more about this?

I have seen programs that will save them as .pdfs with unique passwords, BUT if you send someone the file and your unique password (usually included with the main file in a .zip on torrent sites) then they can still open it. You have something that locks it specifically to one computer???

Tell me more :)

[IronFist]

^ bump for answers to those questions

[MasterKiller]

I suppose you could always encrypt the PDFs using public key certificates.

[Lee Chiang Po]

Can you tell me more about this?

I have seen programs that will save them as .pdfs with unique passwords, BUT if you send someone the file and your unique password (usually included with the main file in a .zip on torrent sites) then they can still open it. You have something that locks it specifically to one computer???

Tell me more


Mine is called Swiftbook, by Guru Creations. I think I paid like $17 for it. I have sent the file in email, and it arrives like an attachment. You can open it, but you can not send it to anyone else. It is at the end of the road. I have the ability to send it to people. I do not use a download site or such, but will send it when I have conformation of payment. I just attach and send to the email address.
I have copied books, and written books and have made ebooks of them. I used to make a lot of money doing this sort of thing, but lately I have pretty much lost interest in doing it. I had one little booklet that I sold year after year that brought in like 8 grand a year. You make up a bunch of these and you just keep it advertised and or on a web site, linked to anything that even resembles it. You will make money. By bunch, I mean different ebooks. The more you can sell the more bucks you can make. I have an easy 50 grand flowing through my bank account every year, and I never really did much work in producing them. Some are public domain now, and anyone can do them. Just do your own book and put it out there. In looking at the utube numbers it shows millions of people to be interested in what you have to sell.

[cerebus]

Mine is called Swiftbook, by Guru Creations. I think I paid like $17 for it. I have sent the file in email, and it arrives like an attachment. You can open it, but you can not send it to anyone else. It is at the end of the road. I have the ability to send it to people. I do not use a download site or such, but will send it when I have conformation of payment. I just attach and send to the email address.
I have copied books, and written books and have made ebooks of them. I used to make a lot of money doing this sort of thing, but lately I have pretty much lost interest in doing it. I had one little booklet that I sold year after year that brought in like 8 grand a year. You make up a bunch of these and you just keep it advertised and or on a web site, linked to anything that even resembles it. You will make money. By bunch, I mean different ebooks. The more you can sell the more bucks you can make. I have an easy 50 grand flowing through my bank account every year, and I never really did much work in producing them. Some are public domain now, and anyone can do them. Just do your own book and put it out there. In looking at the utube numbers it shows millions of people to be interested in what you have to sell.

Hello. Do you have a link for this? I looked up Swiftbook and Guru Creations, but didn't find what you describe here. Thanks!

[MasterKiller]

Can you tell me more about this?

I have seen programs that will save them as .pdfs with unique passwords, BUT if you send someone the file and your unique password (usually included with the main file in a .zip on torrent sites) then they can still open it. You have something that locks it specifically to one computer???

Tell me more

It's a pretty heady discussion. Best just to use something like this if you aren't very proficient with creating your own certificates.

http://www.aloaha.com/wi-software-en/aloaha-filecrypter.php

[Sal Canzonieri]

I have several ebooks that I sell and I use a program that will prevent people from emailing it to friends. They pay you, and you email it to them. They can not email it to anyone. It is coded from there on out. They have to come to his house and read it off his computer. If you allowed him to print it, he will not pass it around to many people. If you have it out there where people know about it you can make some seriously nasty money. Have you ever looked to see how many people access these gung fu sites on utube and other sites on the internet? There is a huge market for this stuff. I used to print and make up leather bound as well as paper back books, made a lot of bucks doing that too. But, it is a lot of work and I just don't see doing that as I am seriously retired now. Ebooks would be the best way to go. On the other hand, thousands of $20 books is a lot more than a hand full of $40 books now and then. And they do all the work. You need to build a web site and link it to just about everything gung fu. You will sell some books. That would be Books on demand. Some of them will print the product, bind it, and then drop ship to your customer with your company name and address on it. The customer pays up first, and you pay up when you order the books. They print and ship and you never do anything but go to the bank.

I'd like to check out your books for purchase, can you please PM the web address for your ebooks? thanks!

[SPJ]

I think most if not all publisher will offer setting up e-books for download.

the sales usually 100% go to the authors. since there is only one time set up cost.

the paper printed books, on the other hand, the author may set the prices and royalty precentage yourself (self publishing route)

there is a base of the cost, each time the book is printed on paper.

you would add your royalty on top of the base to become the sale price.

however, you want to set the price low for your readers, so more people buy your books.

however, chinese martial arts books are considered special interests books.

meaning they are specialty items, and not that many people will be buying them.

so you may want to set the sale price a bit higher to cover some your publishing costs and on going promotion or ads dollar/cost--

--

[IronFist]

By bunch, I mean different ebooks. The more you can sell the more bucks you can make. I have an easy 50 grand flowing through my bank account every year, and I never really did much work in producing them. Some are public domain now, and anyone can do them. Just do your own book and put it out there. In looking at the utube numbers it shows millions of people to be interested in what you have to sell.

You mean like the bizop "how I made $2,000,000 in a week with my super secret blogging technique" ebooks that people sell on Clickbank? :D :D :D

Or do you mean something substantial that actually gives value to the customer?

[IronFist]

Mine is called Swiftbook, by Guru Creations. I think I paid like $17 for it. I have sent the file in email, and it arrives like an attachment. You can open it, but you can not send it to anyone else. It is at the end of the road. I have the ability to send it to people. I do not use a download site or such, but will send it when I have conformation of payment. I just attach and send to the email address.

I'm curious how this works. Why can't they just send the entire file to someone else? Or extract the .pdf from it?

[IronFist]

Ooh, did you mean swiftebook?

I found their salespage and it mentions locking with password but nothing about it only being able to be opened on one computer.

[ghostexorcist]

I know a person who published a couple of history / philosophy books with www.iuniverse.com

[Lee Chiang Po]

You mean like the bizop "how I made $2,000,000 in a week with my super secret blogging technique" ebooks that people sell on Clickbank?

Or do you mean something substantial that actually gives value to the customer?
__________________


I went to look for it but can not find it either. They seem to be into other stuff too. I do the books myself and sell them myself, if that is considered substantial.
You produce a work that is of interest to individuals. Not everyone will be interested in it. He buys it and will certainly be happy to be able to acquire the information or booklet. It can be unstructive, informitive, or just a good read, but it is something of interest or he would not purchase it. I redone a book that was printed in 1619. Out of print for years. Public domain, has been reprinted a number of times, but limited reprints. I actually did a reprint of it in leather bound, but it was expensive. I have since sold several times more books at half the price, but have made pure profit. You just come up with stuff that you think will sell, reprint it, copy it, rewrite it, or write your own. Just be sure in doing another book you are not infringing or you can get in deep doodoo.
Have you ever bought an ebook? Uasually you need to download a program to open it if you don't already have one. You can open it, but you can not edit or otherwise change it. And You can send it but it will not open or it will simply not be with the attachment. If you spend your time and efforts doing an ebook you certainly do not want others to steal it and pass it around.

[IronFist]

i have seen 100s of ebooks and they were all .pdfs with no security protection. ive seen one .pdf ebook that had a unique password but if you sent it to someone with the password then they could open it.

im very interested in protecting ebooks to only one computer.

[MasterKiller]

i have seen 100s of ebooks and they were all .pdfs with no security protection. ive seen one .pdf ebook that had a unique password but if you sent it to someone with the password then they could open it.

im very interested in protecting ebooks to only one computer.

http://www.aloaha.com/wi-software-en/aloaha-filecrypter.php

[SPJ]

I was going to say that dvd publishing is the future.

with text, pictures and videos all in one dvd.

:cool:

[IronFist]

I was going to say that dvd publishing is the future.

with text, pictures and videos all in one dvd.

:cool:

Needs copy protection, brotato :D

[IronFist]

http://www.aloaha.com/wi-software-en/aloaha-filecrypter.php

I will check this out. Thanks.

I'd love to sell a copy-proof e-version of my book. It would make it way easier and cheaper for me.