How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical GuideSTEP 12: THE TIP SHEET
At this point in your publishing journey, dear readers, you may be wondering when things are going to actually start happening with the book itself. Granted, the cover is underway and you are no doubt still fumbling around with your website and blog, but you may naturally begin to speculate as to what exactly is going on over there. Like, for example, has anyone read it yet?
All in good time, darlings. Not to worry. They haven’t forgotten you. In fact, at any moment now, they will be forwarding a document for you to begin filling out (not unlike the long cover document, actually, only worse, because this is really serious stuff now) called the tip sheet.
“What is a tip sheet?” you may be nervously asking. Good question.
The tip sheet, dear readers, is a very important document filled with data about your book which will be sent to the distributor (such as Ingram) so that they can more accurately, well . . . distribute your book. It’s extremely important to get your data right so that your book ends up on the correct shelf, either in a real brick-and-mortar store or a virtual one, but no pressure.
Now might be a good time to tell you, in case you’re again given over to wondering, that Ingram is the proverbial “man behind the curtain” to whom we all must at least pay attention to, if not outright bow down to. And all this time you thought it was to the publisher to whom you were beholden, didn’t you? Well, okay, that’s partially true, of course, but the publisher is – if not beholden, than certainly reliant – on the distributor, which means, to a certain extent, that you are, too.
The publisher, or any POD service, for that matter, can print a whole warehouse of books for you, but without a distributor to get your book into the marketplace, you’re rather – how shall I delicately put it? – SOL. Ingram isn’t really hiding behind any curtain, however; they’re right out in front directing the shots. Nor is the reference really a proverb, so my rather feeble metaphor is quickly breaking down. Scrap that and just realize that you, the author, rely on the publisher to get your baby out into the word, and the publisher, in turn, relies on Ingram.
And if the publisher you are working with is a hybrid of sorts (which, remember, I expressly stated in the beginning of this little Guide that this is the model we would be examining), you get the privilege of helping to create your data sheet. Don’t whine, darlings; it doesn’t become you. Learn to see the glass as half full.
And anyway, the publisher sort of helps you by filling out some of the data points for you (the easier ones, I might add), such as: trim size, format, ISBN, title, subtitle, author, cover image, page count, etc., disappointingly leaving you, however, with the hard ones, such as: long description, short description, target audience, publicity plan, Bisac codes, keywords, and endorsements (aka blurbs).
Lest you are tempted to sluff on this assignment, let me further emphasize its importance. All of this information, which is now called your metadata (which is a fancy word, really, for data about data) really does have a purpose. For one thing, it will be on hand for Ingram’s many sales teams when they walk into their quarterly meetings with Barnes and Noble or Target or Costco in which they try to persuade them to stock your book. Also it will be uploaded into some mega feed that populates Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Baker and Taylor, Goodreads, Page Foundry, Chegg, VitalSource, Gardners, Kobo, Itunes, IBookstore, etc., all of which I don’t completely understand, so don’t ask me. The point, as you can see, is that it’s not a wasted effort.
Hopefully, I’ve now captured your attention without simultaneously causing an annoying full-on panic or perhaps momentary paralysis. Take a deep breath, darlings. It’s not as bad as it looks. For example, you can copy and paste your description from your cover worksheet, and we’ve already discussed the publicity plan ad nauseam (see Steps 5-7). That only leaves target audience, Bisacs, keywords and endorsements. So not too much, then. Kidding.
Sadly, however, each of these requires a bit more explanation than the space afforded, so we’ll delve into these further next week. Until then, chin up. I have plenty more, er . . . tips in store.
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STEP 12: THE TIP SHEET appeared first on Michelle Cox.
