Many new authors also think that getting a book in print guarantees them success and sales.  This is absolutely not true.  They are fooling themselves if they think it is.  Authors are so hung up on getting a hard copy of their book, that they seem to lose sight of the newest in publishing trends, primarily digital. The digital movement only makes sense for so many reasons: earth friendly, ease of storage, ease of access to published materials, and costs far less to the consumer.

More important than all the aforementioned facts, is your copyright.  As soon as you place your book with a publishing house, no matter what they say, THEY own the copyright.  So, for instance, if your novel does become a huge success and Hollywood comes knocking, the movie rights no longer belong to you exclusively.  These copyright arrangements also do not have the rights of surviorship for your family.  So now if you, God forbid, pass away from all the excitement of your book sales, your surviving kin will not have any copyright claims.

That being said I must call attention to several articles with regard to publishing house scams.  They may seem like a good deal to authors, however, the only one who makes money is the publishing house.  For example:

Publish America

AuthorHouse

Xlibris Iuniverse and Others

When choosing which company to print your book, keep in mind that they will be getting paid for their efforts.  Your best bet in this market is to self-publish digitally (Kindle or Ipad).  This is the only way you will not lose money.

Getting published is hard work, but its really just the first step on your journey to becoming an author.

In today’s world of e-books, e-mail and things of like-nature, there are too many good books going unpublished. However, few people outside of the book industry are fully aware of the amount work that goes into creating a finished book. If you don’t have experience in this area you are probably going to need to enlist the expertise of a good many professionals, or be willing to undertake the learning curve and the necessary time to adequately prepare yourself for the task at hand. You will need to learn about book design — interior and exterior — editing, proof-reading, securing printer’s quotes, obtaining ISBN numbers, how to obtain an EAN and bar code, and why it is required, and how to distribute your books once they come back from the printer.

But before any of that can happen, you must make a few decisions about some very basic things, such as the look of the book, the physical size, the type of paper you envision the book being printed on, the number of colours the cover will have (and what your budget will allow). Every little thing takes money off of your bottom line.