A letter to an Entrepreneur - 2
Dear Mr. Entrepreneur,
A Telephonic conversation with you, made me realize that you want to start your own publication house which is a good business in a traditional category. but I am not convinced with the reason why you want to start it and so decided to write to you before its too late.
Why do we set-up any business? What is the purpose of starting our own business? You must first try to find out answers for these questions and if you come up with satisfactory answers then only move ahead with the planning stage. See you said you are a good writer and want to publish your own book, so you want to start publishing house. Now tell me will you start up a Breweries just because you like to drink?? If your answer is yes. Go ahead. But if your answer is No, get your priorities right.
I know you are a good writer. I have read some of your poems and I found them excellent. Even though I don't have much knowledge about Publishing a book. I can tell you some logical things which any layman can tell you. To sell a book you must think from the marketer's point of view and not from the writer's point of view. Because even if you are a good writer; if the subject on which you are writing doesn't have mass-appeal it won't get enough readers and so publishers will not take a risk to publish it. Being an author You may feel sad about this fact, but seriously you yourself should give it a thought if you were in the place of publisher what would you do? Revenue minus Cost of production is profit. And without getting this equation in mind if you will try to write your book, you will find it really difficult to sell it to publishers. If you managed to get a publisher who has enough guts to take a risk to sell unconventional writing, then you are lucky !!
There are two thumb rules of success in the writing field. If you are a famous personality, anything you write will get readership and if you are really a good writer, you ought to get good readers who understand the quality of content. I guess right now you don't fit in any of the categories. If you have lots of money then you can easily publish a book. Because there are publishers who are more than happy if they can get their cost of production recovered. For that matter they will first ask you to buy a minimum 100 copies of books by yourself, they will keep all the rights to make the front page of book with themselves and will guide you to invest money to carry out a big event to launch your book in a function from an eminent personality from local politics. The purpose of telling all this thing is to make you realize that publishing your book is not as hard as you feel. It's absolutely not rocket science. But tell me, do you really want this kind of "Purchased Publicity' or you want real genuine readers for whatever you write?? The call is yours.
Coming back to your publishing venture. I will advise you to do total costing for the start-up of publishing house and tell me are you really going to run it for a longer time to at least recover your cost and make some profit out of it in long term? Do you really have a passion for running your own Organization? Are you a good reader by yourself to understand the taste of other readers? Can you seriously devote your time to publish more and more books? And then take your decision. You are planning to start your own Publishing house just because you want to Write books? Think Again.
Regards,
Deepak Doddamani
A Telephonic conversation with you, made me realize that you want to start your own publication house which is a good business in a traditional category. but I am not convinced with the reason why you want to start it and so decided to write to you before its too late.
Why do we set-up any business? What is the purpose of starting our own business? You must first try to find out answers for these questions and if you come up with satisfactory answers then only move ahead with the planning stage. See you said you are a good writer and want to publish your own book, so you want to start publishing house. Now tell me will you start up a Breweries just because you like to drink?? If your answer is yes. Go ahead. But if your answer is No, get your priorities right.
I know you are a good writer. I have read some of your poems and I found them excellent. Even though I don't have much knowledge about Publishing a book. I can tell you some logical things which any layman can tell you. To sell a book you must think from the marketer's point of view and not from the writer's point of view. Because even if you are a good writer; if the subject on which you are writing doesn't have mass-appeal it won't get enough readers and so publishers will not take a risk to publish it. Being an author You may feel sad about this fact, but seriously you yourself should give it a thought if you were in the place of publisher what would you do? Revenue minus Cost of production is profit. And without getting this equation in mind if you will try to write your book, you will find it really difficult to sell it to publishers. If you managed to get a publisher who has enough guts to take a risk to sell unconventional writing, then you are lucky !!
There are two thumb rules of success in the writing field. If you are a famous personality, anything you write will get readership and if you are really a good writer, you ought to get good readers who understand the quality of content. I guess right now you don't fit in any of the categories. If you have lots of money then you can easily publish a book. Because there are publishers who are more than happy if they can get their cost of production recovered. For that matter they will first ask you to buy a minimum 100 copies of books by yourself, they will keep all the rights to make the front page of book with themselves and will guide you to invest money to carry out a big event to launch your book in a function from an eminent personality from local politics. The purpose of telling all this thing is to make you realize that publishing your book is not as hard as you feel. It's absolutely not rocket science. But tell me, do you really want this kind of "Purchased Publicity' or you want real genuine readers for whatever you write?? The call is yours.
Coming back to your publishing venture. I will advise you to do total costing for the start-up of publishing house and tell me are you really going to run it for a longer time to at least recover your cost and make some profit out of it in long term? Do you really have a passion for running your own Organization? Are you a good reader by yourself to understand the taste of other readers? Can you seriously devote your time to publish more and more books? And then take your decision. You are planning to start your own Publishing house just because you want to Write books? Think Again.
Regards,
Deepak Doddamani
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