Reddit reviews APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur—How to Publish a Book

Hey there...welcome to the world of writing. Hang on, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

So, let me start out with some basics...as I don't want to assume how much you do or do not know.

• First, it's a very rare case...very, very, rare where a first novel will be good enough to publish. You may be the rare exception, but I just want to warn you that one is not enough. For instance, Brandon Sanderson was working on his 13th novel when his 6th novel was picked up. Likewise, it was my 14th novel that I wrote that became my publishing debut. So I just want to set that expectation at the get go. Stephen King said you should treat your first 1,000,000 words as practice and Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours working on something to become proficient at anything. I think those are pretty spot on. So keep that in mind.
  
  
• A few red flags went up for me regarding your description because you seemed very focused on the "setting" (world, maps, etc), and while fantasy has more world building than most books it's still just the stage and as such not nearly as important as the characters and their struggles and the story. So, I just caution you that an "interesting world" is just a "teeny-tiny" fraction of the writing process and it's the characters that people are going to get invested in...so you need to have a clear idea on that part.
  
  
• I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but you used the word so I want to head off disasster...churning out books is probably not a good approach. Yes, you have to publish, rinse, and repeat, but if your mindset is to "churn out multiple books" I worry that you won't be focusing on the quality of the work produced. This is a profession that lives and dies by "word-of-mouth" and "repeat buyers" and to get those two things your books have to be (a) adhere to a high level of quality and (b) be polished to perfection.
  
  Okay, with all that out of the way...there are two basic approaches once you have a finished manuscript:
  
  
• traditional publishing - which requires an agent, and is obtained by writing a query letter. You can learn more about that process here
  
  
• The other is self-publishing (not vanity publishing - don't confuse the two), where you take care of all the work that the publisher does - writing, editing, cover design, layout, formatting, distribution, and on and on and on. To do this right takes a LONG time to learn...but the good news is there are plenty of people who have gone that way before you and you can learn from their experiences. A good place to start might be this book: APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur—How to Publish a Book. There is much more you'll have to learn but that is a good place to start.
  
  And yes, you can be published by a US or UK author even if you are from another country. You, of course, must be fluent in English, and again either route (self or traditional) is possible.

Have you read Guy Kawasaki's book? Any opinions on his advice?

Just buy APE. It has pretty much everything you'll need to get your book up.

What made you go directly for a smaller author-services company?

According to industry though-leader Guy Kawasaki, Amazon has a majority of the market share (over 70%) and he subsequently recommends publishing first with CreateSpace should you choose to use author-services.

I worked for an up-and-coming author services company & was not impressed with their ability to help their customers sell books.

If you are feeling overwhelmed, Guy's book APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur (link below) is an amazing resource for the first-time self-publisher.

Hope that helps!

http://www.amazon.com/APE-Publisher-Entrepreneur-How-Publish-ebook/dp/B00AGFU5VS