Sameer Kamat 
My self-published book, Business Doctors, shows an Out of Stock status on Flipkart.
My year-long publishing experiment is over and I won’t be printing any more physical copies. This puts Business Doctors in an unusual situation, with a dormant demand building up for it but no new stock to quell it.
Here’s the book marketing plan that helped in getting it to this stage.
Many readers and writers have been asking me about it. So, I thought I should share the story here to help other aspiring authors who want to explore non-traditional ways to reach their readers. My first book, Beyond The MBA Hype (non-fiction) was published by a leading publisher with an international presence. It has done … Read more
I finally took the plunge. No, not marriage. That happened a long time ago. Not swimming either. That goes further back in time. It was the big question that most authors have on their mind – ‘Which is better – traditional publishing or self-publishing?’
Almost all the posts you see on this blog focus on what to do after you have completed writing your book. Some focus on writing query letters, pitching to literary agents and publishers, dealing with rejection letters. There have been none on how to improve your creative writing skills. All this while we’ve been ignoring the big elephant in the room – bad writing. That’s a big reason why many authors get rejection letters from publishing companies and literary agency.
A Times of India reporter reached out to ask me about my views on literary agents (here’s the published article). The interest in the topic was triggered by the recent announcement that Amish Tripathi (author of the Shiva trilogy) has recently got an eye-popping Rs 5 crore advance for his next series. That’s a million US dollars!
It was good to see that the second print run for my MBA book (Beyond The MBA Hype) was sold out on Flipkart. The book was published 1.5 years ago with very little fanfare.
I jumped up in slow motion, pumped my fist in the air and froze there hoping the credits will start rolling.
When I fell back on the ground with a thud, I realized two things.
Self-publishing has been growing at an impressive or alarming rate, depending on which side of the fence you are. Authors tired of waiting for the bigger publishing companies are taking the reins of writing, editing, cover designing and publishing into their own hands. Some are making money. Most are falling by the wayside.
Apart from trying to get your kick-a$$ manuscript for your soon-to-be best-seller novel on the tables of influential editors, I hope you have also been working on the less glamorous but equally important task of strengthening your ‘author platform’.
It’s not just important for publishers to discover you and your work. It is also important for your readers to discover you.
I have been getting increasingly curious about the size of the eBook market in India. More than the size of the ebook market, I’m also keen on learning about whether Indian readers are latching on to the new trend of using electronic reading devices such as Kindle, iPad and notebooks. And the interest in the ebook market isn’t an overnight development. There’s a reason behind it.
After all these posts, I realised the most frequently asked questions relating to literary agent commissions in the minds of new authors haven’t been directly tackled yet. What’s the average commission rate for literary agents? What is this commission applicable on? How do literary agents get their share (i.e. how do they get paid)? Does the commission percentage remain the same for everything that the author sells? Do these rates justify full-time literary agent jobs?
Well, I’m not too sure if we should get into that last question. But let’s try to get some answers for the others.
Most blog posts on publishing related websites talk about how important it is to have Literary agents represent authors. So it is only inevitable that the reverse question comes up frequent, specially from authors who’ve tried their best to reach out to the best literary agents in town (and outside) and haven’t had much luck.
Aren’t there any advantages of not having a literary agency offer representation? You bet there are.
Literary agents and publishers reject an overwhelmingly large number of query letters than they accept. With those odds, it’s hard not to have gone through the rejection and dejection phase. In many cases, it’s not even an outright rejection of the query letter through a template responses. It’s that eerie silence from the other side that gets on the nerves of new authors. There are ways for authors to deal with rejection.
But does a rejection (implied or explicit) from a literary agency that was on the top of your wishlist mean it’s the end of the road for you?