Networking at Book Fairs

Earlier this year, I went to the Seoul International Book Fair at COEX.  I went primarily to network and to get some ideas on which route to take on publishing my book.  I was also in a bit of a muddle as I had just fired my illustrator as his work was not professional enough and he was way behind schedule turning in his illustrations to me.

                Low and behold, I was very excited to find that India was vastly represented and figured they would have an understanding of my book.

                I looked around to find one company who did quite a few nonfiction books and memoirs on India and started to tell them my story.  They were quite impressed and I received a price quote right then.

                After they arrived back in India, we kept in touch on a daily basis via Skype. I sent them an abstract and the next thing I knew, a cover design had been done in just a few days.  I was quite impressed.  I then sent them a portion of my book and they once again had the page design all done in a matter of days.

                One day I decided to contact them again on getting a contract.  A few weeks passed by and I never heard from them until today.  They said, “Long time, no hear”.  I told them that I had not heard from them in a long time so I decided to take a different route.

                A lesson can be learned here from all you book writers out there:

• ·         Do your research

• ·         If you decide to go with a printing company or a vanity publisher, get a sample contract before you go any further

• ·         Do you really need to spend money on a printing company or a vanity publisher?

• ·         Try to do everything on your own to make the most money out of your book by using CreateSpace to print-on-demand your book and by creating a blog to market it

Thankfully, I did not give this so-called printer/publisher any money.  Lesson learned.

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