A Poet’s Tale: How I Found the Right Publisher

Publishing one’s work is both expensive and time-consuming. Sometimes it is very frustrating. In many ways, writing or creating the work is the easiest part. Once that is complete, the next task is to find a good publisher.

I already had about one thousand poems written and stored on my website. I also had nine thousand photographs stored. I had written poems in conjunction with my photographs on an author’s site for about three years, and posted them out there as well. That site has about twenty thousand international authors on it. Everyone posts and reviews each other’s work. I had been getting very good reviews, which is what encouraged me to write my books.

I had my raw material, and so I went through and selected those I wanted in my books. I chose 150 poems. I then categorized each poem as A, B, and C. Then I did the same for their associated photographs. I grouped them into three books, making sure that I had an even mix of quality for all three categories. I then created a table of contents and an introduction for the each book and intros for each chapter.

So when the time to publish came, I asked those on the site for advice. The trouble was most of my followers were in England, Holland, Spain, and Australia, so I really hadn’t got much help from them. Then I searched on the Internet, and my best choice was the one called Outskirts Press. I published my first two books with them. They ended up pricing my book in the fifty-dollar range due to the colored photos, and they provided little support for editing or marketing. As a result, I sold very little. My books were too expensive and only available in hardcopy.

Thankfully, LitFire found my work and called me. I republished my first two books and also published the third one with them. The result was that my hardcopy price dropped.

Here are some differences that I noted between the two:

• Both publishers cost about the same to publish the work, but Outskirts only provided the hardcopy version while with LitFire I got hardcopy (priced at $29.99) and paperback (priced at $17.99).
• Outskirts basically took everything I had verbatim and put it out while LitFire edited and reformatted the work I submitted.
• Outskirts’s upload routine was difficult and complex while LitFire’s was simple.
• The edit routine at Outskirts was complicated and made me do all the work while LitFire’s was as easy as e-mail.
• Both publishers provided a team to work with, and both were efficient.
• While publishing my three books simultaneously, LitFire also helped me meet a very tight publishing deadline and split my deliveries as required.
• LitFire registered my books in the Library of Congress while Outskirts did not.

Overall, I feel LitFire produced a better and more professional produce. I feel they genuinely care about my success.