How to Sell Your Novel

Video Transcript

"You have a wonderful idea for a book, you know it's going to be a best seller. How do you sell it to a publishing house? Fiction, frankly is a tough sell. With fiction it's hard to say there are people out there that need this book. Because primarily can be educational but it's mostly an entertainment process. So you don't have people out there that are going to be making videos that want to learn to do a video, how to edit a video. So you have to, in a sense, develop your market. So when you are submitting to either an agent or to a publishing house with a fiction proposal for your novel often they'll want to see a few chapters first. They want to get a sense of your writing style. They want to know the theme of the story. What's the story art? Where's the conflict arise? Where's the story line? How does this go? What other books are out there similar to your book in the same kind of genre? How are they selling? What makes your book different? This is all described to the agent and or the publishing house in your query letter which is followed by your book proposal. The book proposal sells the book in my opinion. The book proposal, typically, for fiction is accompanied with at least three or four chapters of manuscript that they can then read and review. So we want to really help them understand who is going to read this book. What is the track record of books like this? Is it a romance novel? Is it a military thriller? Is it a murder mystery? So we've got to really make sure we understand the genre. Understand and have a background and we've read lots of those books and we're formatted into a story line with a theme that is going to be recognizable to the agent, recognizable to the publisher that they'll immediately know they're dealing with a professional and your novel will move to the next step. I wish you all the luck in selling your novel. I'm John Graden and I hope that helps you reach your success. Thanks."