New "Dual Track" Route to Being Published

Hey, I did my time for that one. I'm reformed now.

I love Marriott time share presentations. I sit through them politely, then scoop up my 10,000 Rewards points.

That is the sickest thing you've said yet.

Lin

I agree you can be your own gatekeeper and in non fiction the person proposing a title is often better informed of the market than the commissioning editor. But, what of the bookshop buyer?

I get several hundred emails a year from readers and rely on their comments to inform future editions or new titles. I could market a self published title to them. I haven’t done it because my publisher will pay an advance higher than I can expect to earn from self publishing. The publisher can do this because they get the title in the bookstores.

mike bryon wrote:

I get several hundred emails a year from readers and rely on their comments to inform future editions or new titles.

Great way to get feedback, that's pure gold. I get a couple of emails a year, nothing I can put to significant use.

What I do is buy used copies of my text on Half and Amazon. Not pristine desk copies, but rather, copies advertised as used and missing pages. The nastier, the better. This is because I want to see which worksheets are missing, which are always intact, what pages soak up the most highlighter, what pages look never read. I especially like seeing handwriting in the margins and instructor handouts tucked in the pages. All this will inform changes for the second edition (assuming I'm lucky enough for it to merit a second edition; so far, sales are good).

Look, since everybody around here freaks out at any mention of PA, I'll thank you not to stick it into my threads.