Hi, I’m Jim Frey. I’m the owner of the American Literary Press and I’m going to talk to you about how to publish your book.
How competitive is the book publishing industry?
Jim Frey: The book publishing business is very competitive. Industry figures indicate that 3500 plus books a week are published in the United States alone and if you think of that, that’s a massive number over a year. It’s also more competitive when you include some of the e-books that may be obtained online.
For authors, 30,000 manuscripts, meaning that manuscript of your book, similar manuscripts are sent to publishing houses in New York every week, 30,000 of them. We sometimes tell people that we’re not sure if there are more writers than there are readers in the United States. Say from a publishing perspective, there’s a big number of books that are published and there are thousands of manuscripts that are in transit back and forth between publishers and authors everyday.
In terms of the book selling business, you’ve seen the changes in bookstores probably during your lifetime where there a lot smaller independent bookstores and very few large ones. Today, you can go into any major shopping mall and probably find two or three mega bookstores and not see as many independent bookstores in your town or city where you live.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services