When you are new to the publishing world; it can be an overwhelming experience, and you will soon find that any expectations that you had about the industry has often been misjudged.

This blog addresses five of the most common beliefs that new authors have when entering the publishing industry that turn out to be misconstrued!

1. Your book will be published in a couple of months after signing a contract.

Unless you choose to become a self-published author, you will find that the process from submission to publication can be very long. This is because the book is going through the vital stages of proofreading, editing, typesetting, designing, printing, marketing and everything in-between to make your book as great as it can possibly be. KN Literary have written a great blog outlining the timeline of the journey of a book. It can take anywhere from 12 to 18 months dependent on lots of individual factors!

2. The publisher will take care of the publicity.

At Austin Macauley, we pride ourselves on marketing our authors’ books from the minute their publication date is available! However, as an author, you are the advocate of your brand and your story. Authors are imperative to the marketing process as no one knows your story better than you do! The booker prize winner Margaret Atwood, who famously wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, is very active on Twitter and uses the platform to run competitions and showcase bursts of creation. She believes that the key to building a broad community of ardent readers is to embrace and champion the changing publishing landscape, not shun it. You can read the full article here. Some of our most successful authors have large followings on social media and organise their own events!

3. Once you are published, you become a best-selling author!

As the famous performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor, and songwriter Eddie Cantor once said; ‘it takes 20 years to become an overnight success’. In this case, it is always important to remember that being published, and being a best-selling author are very different. Making your book a bestseller takes an immense amount of hard work and lots of time! Read this blog to see other author misconceptions, and how their success was not easy. You have to be extremely passionate about making money to become a best-selling author, and just like any job, this means being proactive and working hard!

4. Self-publishing is more profitable.

While going down the self-publishing route allows you to have a lot more control over the journey of your book, statistically, it is much less profitable. There are many reasons for this, the main reason being that book shops tend to stock books from reputable publishers. This means that self-publishers are already going to find it much more difficult to gain sales. In addition to this, it is important to remember that as you are not in partnership with a publisher, you will have to pay for any editing, printing and marketing as an extra service. Most self-publishers will sell most of their books through Amazon, who are known to take a very large cut from your sales! Signing with a publisher will allow you to have more distribution channels and better rates. Additionally, publishers have established connections with distributors, press, and thousands of other industry contacts that would be invaluable to any author!

5. A publisher will get my book into all of the book shops.

At Austin Macauley, we pitch all of our books to both mainstream and independent book shops. However, it is important to remember that the book market is incredibly crowded, and bookshops get hundreds of emails daily from publishers, asking for their books to be stocked. It is therefore up to the specific stockist of that book shop to decide which books they want to stock, and this can often be heavily dependent on trends at that specific book shop or local area. That being said, getting your book physically stocked in book shops does not always mean that your book will sell better. Current trends indicate that the majority of book sales are taken place online. According to one article, 70% of book sales in 2017 were taken place online, and this is mainly as a result of the growth of online demand.

If you have a manuscript that you would like us to review, we are now accepting submissions! Help us spread the word of these common author misconceptions by sharing this post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn!