How to Get Published with Multi-Media Publications Inc.

Multi-Media Publications is looking for books, ebooks, audio books, DVDs and interactive learning products on the following topics:

Non-Fiction

Project Management
Leadership
Software Development Management
Agile Development/Agile Management
Lean Manufacturing/Six Sigma
Human Resources Management
Risk Management and Strategic Planning
Lessons from History for Modern Business Managers
Other topics of interest to senior IT managers and CIOs

Fiction

Science Fiction
Fantasy
Horror
Suspense/Thrillers/Mystery
Romance
Action Adventures

We are NOT accepting new poetry, children's, or young adult fiction titles.

We are a small, independent publisher with distribution arrangements through most of the major book distributors and retailers. We can manufacture and distribute your books like any other publisher, but with a difference: with a small publisher, you get our full attention and support.

We realize that the key to a successful book is not just a quality product, but also ensuring that it gets sold out into the marketplace. While authors are key to helping make a book a success with any publisher, we work closely with the author to link our advertising and promotional activities with any plans the author may have so that we can leverage the strengths of the two sets of tasks, and align them into one strategic promotional plan unique to each book.

We are NOT a vanity press or subsidy publisher. We DO pay royalties on book sales, and we do NOT try to make money off of our authors.

Submission Guidelines

We would like to see a written book proposal detailing your book idea and chapter outlines. Successful proposals include a marketing plan for the book that ties it to a specific target market (hint: define your target market in the proposal). Finally, we would like to see your credentials for writing on this topic and any relevant past publishing credits that you may have. For any books you have published, please include unit sales figures, if available.

You can send your book proposal to our acquisitions editor, Sarah Schwersenska at sarah@mmpubs.com for an initial review. If the proposal passes an initial check to make sure it adequately addresses the items we outlined above, it will be passed on to the editorial management team for a deeper review and a decision on whether the book aligns with our future publishing plans.

Normally, you will get a very quick response from our team -- usually in less than 1 week. Since we provide such a quick turn-around time, we request that you do not send simultaneous submissions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you pay royalty advances?

Advances are getting quite uncommon in the publishing world. Only name-brand authors with a following, or follow-on titles from successful authors get an advance these days -- these are titles where the publisher knows with some certainty that the books will sell above a certain level. In this case, the publisher can build in the advance into their financial model for each book. Nothing is free, however: publishers who pay advances typically pay very low royalties, in the 3-8% range. In addition, most publishing contracts allow the publisher to hold back royalties in a reserve fund to adjust for future returns from bookstores. (Returns is a BIG problem in the publishing industry. We can get up to 40% of our sold titles back from bookstores for credit, often damaged and unsellable as new copies.) As well, these publishers tie up the copyright ownership in exchange for the advance. In essence, they are buying the rights from the author, and the author loses most of the rights to the book.

Instead, we've taken a different approach. We offer a much higher royalty (20% of net sales) instead of an advance, and the author retains ALL rights to the book. We just seek a license to manufacture and sell the book through our distribution channels. The authors are free to create derivative works, sell their movie rights, sell copies on their own web sites, make T-shirts about the book, etc. Our authors have the right to cancel our contract at any time after the first year. Since 1988, no one has yet exercised that right. With the author getting a higher royalty and no advance, there is much more incentive for the author to participate in promoting the book, something that benefits us all. People sell books, and author participation in the sales effort is key. By sharing the risk with the author in this manner, we encourage a higher level of sales participation, which (most of the time) leads to a much higher level of sales.

Do you use Print On Demand (POD) printers? And if not, what will be the size of my initial press run?

Nearly all publishers use POD in some situations as part of a capital management strategy. In our case, we use POD technology for generating Advance Review Copies (ARCs) that we send out before the publication date. For some titles where prepublication orders from distributors and bulk buyers are low, forecasting the size of an initial offset print run becomes difficult, so we may begin with POD for a few months while we monitor sales velocity and growth. After 3-6 months of sales data, we can better forecast the book's sales curve over the first two years and make a decision on the size of an offset print run. Some titles that really do not gain traction with early marketing and promotional efforts may stay on POD for a longer period, even indefinitely, though our preference is always for offset due to the higher quality of printed output and lower production costs on larger quantities. For backlist titles, once the sales curve drops off later in a book's life, and offset inventories are exhausted, it may not be financially viable to prepare another offset print run, yet we may also want to keep a book in print because there are profitable sales, even at a lower level. In this last case, we transition a title from offset back on to POD until the end of its life.

The strategy listed above is not too different from that of most publishers these days. Nearly all use POD for ARCs and backlist titles. The only difference you may find is whether a publisher uses POD for risky books before going to offset or goes directly to offset.

Is there really a market for ebooks? Why is MMP so interested in doing ebook versions as well as a traditional paperback or hardcover version of my book?

Most publishers who do ebooks just spit out an Adobe PDF file. We produce Adobe PDF ebooks, but we also produce Palm Reader PDB ebooks for PCs, Palm devices and smart phones like the Treo; Microsoft Reader LIT format for handheld PCs, smart phones based on the Mobile Windows OS, and desktop PCs; and Mobipocket PRC which is used on desktop PCs and smart phones. Smartphones tend to only support one of these formats, not multiples, so creating the file in multiple formats maximizes our reach. In addition, Mobipocket (in France) is the exclusive ebook supplier now to Amazon, since Amazon bought them earlier this year -- most ebook suppliers still are not working with Mobipocket, thought we have been working with them since 2004. Amazon's new Kindle ebook reader uses the Mobipocket format.

We have perhaps the widest ebook distribution of any publisher that you will encounter. Our ebooks are even sold in OfficeMax stores from kiosks where people can download them onto memory sticks or burn them onto CD-ROMs, available from over 60 public libraries across the USA, on Books 24x7 on most large corporate intranets (one of our ebooks achieved over $6,000 in sales in just its first 9 weeks on Books 24x7 last quarter), and via internal corporate ebook purchase/download sites for major corporations and associations (like Realtors, etc.) As well as ALL the major ebook web sites. Even Sony sells our ebooks on their web site for their Clié handheld computer.

We were pioneers in the delivery of digital content back in the late 1980s and are still actively participating in this market. We strongly believe that the future of content delivery is moving in this direction, and the marketplace is finally starting to share our vision. eBooks make up approximately 20% of our overall sales, and it is a fast-growing area.

Aside from your network of book wholesalers, distributors, and retailers (such as Amazon.com), how will you promote my book?

We participate in co-op advertising with our distributors and wholesalers and publish our titles in their catalogs, where it makes economic sense. We also send out direct mail 4 times per year to acquisition librarians across North America featuring our titles and providing discounts for publisher direct orders. We purchase pages in a couple of catalogs that go out to independent bookstores, and feature select books in a catalog published by the Canadian government highlighting available foreign rights that is handed out at book fairs in Frankfurt (the world's largest), London, Beijing, and at BookExpo in the U.S.A. We purchase exhibit space for select books at these events and at regional library association events. We have an in-house sales rep focused on bulk book sales to non-book trade customers. We use direct-to-consumer printed mail and email marketing using targeted mailing lists. We promote author tours/signings and arrange for author speeches at conferences where we set up booths for back-of-room sales. We send out press releases announcing book launches, author appearances, and any time an author (mostly non-fiction authors) have some book tie-in to current events. We contact radio show producers and send out media kits to help arrange for interviews, and much, much more... We work together as a promotional team. Not only do we provide these services, but we also provide access to the databases and tools (such as bulk email mailing list management tools, etc.) that our authors can use to help with their own book promotion efforts.

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