Shel Horowitz, book packager and publishing consultant, can help you publish your book the right way

Advantages of Publishing a Book

Hundreds of speakers, consultants, entrepreneurs, thought-leaders, social change activists, and service providers have used their own books to leverage their careers. As a published author, you can:

• Dramatically increase your status in the eyes of your prospects
• More easily increase your fees
• Create a direct profit center that actually pays you to do your own marketing
• Attract a never-ending stream of media interviews, sometimes even in prestigious hard-to-crack markets like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and top national magazines
• Generate inbound links to your website from Google and the best websites in your field
• Achieve visibility on Amazon.com and other high-traffic sites
• Sell additional products to your existing customers, or to attenders at your events (in some cases, you'll make more from product sales than your speaking fee!)
• Create a product that could interest the top names in your field--who may endorse and recommend your work, and even set themselves up to sell it on commission to their own large and well-established networks
• Get your ideas out into the world and make a difference!

You could be one of these accomplished authors. But the path to a successful book is not a straight line. You face a huge learning curve, the need to understand and master dozens of separate skills, and you must navigate the shark-infested waters where unscrupulous or incompetent vendors try to separate you from as much of your money as they can.

What Do You Need to Create a Book?

• Evaluate your manuscript for marketability
• Edit for smoothness, conciseness, and clarity
• Locate a suitable co-author or ghostwriter
• Determine which path to publishing is best for you; each of these is right for certain books and wrong for others
  • Traditional publishing: a publisher pays you to publish your book. If you choose that path, Shel can prepare a professional book proposal for submission to agents and publishers (for traditional publishing), or
  • True self-publishing: If you choose that path, Shel will walk you through the complicated labyrinth of successful self-publishing and find you the best suppliers and vendors who can provide top-quality editorial, design, and production services at reasonable prices, or
  • Subsidy publishing: you pay a publisher, who supplies you with an ISBN, cover and interior layout, and digital on-demand (or, in rare cases, offset) printing. If you choose to subsidy-publish, Shel will make sure you understand exactly what the publisher will and won't do, and that you have appropriate markets in place for this choice to make sense.
• Smooth the way to locate Joint Venture and/or commissioned affiliate partners who can take your book to markets you couldn't reach on your own
• Assist you to connect with special markets: foreign publishers, book clubs, corporations and organizations that might buy in bulk
• Help you approach distributors and wholesalers, bookstore buyers, reviewers, and other trade professionals
• Design an individual marketing strategy for your book that harnesses low-cost/no-cost methods from partnerships to highlighting your expertise to free publicity, and write the materials to carry it out, both online and offline

Shel Horowitz lets you decide how much or how little of his time makes sense for your project. You can buy a single affordable hour of consulting time, if that's what you need...or you can have Shel coordinate the job from start to finish, taking anything from rough notes to final manuscript and turning it into a book that stands proudly in the marketplace.

As one example of a major project, Shel edited the manuscript...helped the author choose to start his own publishing company...found him affordable and effective vendors (for cover and interior design, copy editing, indexing, librarian's cataloging, and both digital on-demand and offset printing)...registered the book and publisher with Books In Print and the Library of Congress...prepared marketing letters for reviewers, book clubs, foreign rights, and bulk special sales...vetted the author's choice of vendors for publicity and other outside services...created the galley cover...prepared two different marketing plans...secured endorsements...and provided extensive consulting on the publishing and marketing processes.

At the other extreme, Shel provided a 60-minute phone consultation on the best options for publishing a book; that was all the client wanted, and that was fine.

     I contracted Shel Horowitz to write a marketing plan for my first title. I wanted the plan to focus on the traditional book trade because I needed to entice distributors (with only one title, I need a distributor to get national coverage). I sent packets out on a Friday to three distributors and by Wednesday morning, I had heard from one of the biggest in the industry, Biblio, accepting my book (they say on their Web site it will take 4-6 weeks to hear from them)! Thanks so much, Shel. I couldn't have done it without your expertise and your help!
     --Yardena Rand, Maverick Spirit Press

     Before opening my own franchise I worked closely with the marketing departments of two nationally known franchise operations. Most of the marketing materials and strategies I've seen from the large companies have been generic, slick and ineffective. There were gaps preventing solid implementation and results.
     Shel quickly sized up the situation, filled the gaps and gave me practical, effective tactics I could implement immediately. The results are already showing. I'd recommend a consult with Shel before investing another dollar on marketing. This was without a doubt the most productive marketing consult I have ever experienced.
     --Dan Green,, Member of the Gerson Lehrman Group of Business Consultants

     I love working with you because you are some smart guy. There is no change recommended so far that has not improved the book.
     --Robert Kelleher, author, Winning the Game of Life: The Ten Commandments in Today's World

     Shel Horowitz both substantially improved the manuscript through a detailed edit and guided me at every step of the publishing and marketing process.
     --Richard Kruth, from the Acknowledgements page of What's Your Financial Plan?

     Shel is the master of frugal. He know how to navigate the waters. He has the experience and knows the landscape.
     --Robert Goodman, Silvercat Books (publisher and book shepherd)

Why is Shel Qualified to Help You?

In the publishing industry since 1977, Shel has published five of his ten books through his own imprint, one each with John Wiley & Sons and Simon & Schuster, and three with mid-sized publishers Chelsea Green, Morgan James, and Stackpole (a co-authorship with Richard Curtis--who owns one of the two New York literary agencies where Shel worked early in his career--and Elizabeth Hogan). Seven of his ten books have won at least one award and/or been published in at least one foreign country, including one that was published by Korea's equivalent to the Wall Street Journal.

Shel has spoken at writing and publishing conferences events from Massachusetts to California, including several PMA/IBPA (Publishers Marketing Association/Independent Book Publishers Association) Universities. He has published articles in the IBPA Independent, Span Connection, Independent Publisher and Foreword, as well as several different regional publishing association newsletters. He has been quoted in Publisher's Weekly, Book Marketing Update, and in many other industry publications; he's also been quoted widely in mainstream general media, including multiple mentions in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Inc, Woman's Day, Christian Science Monitor, Bottom Line, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and one-time appearances in dozens of others.

Shel is cited/acknowledged in numerous books about publishing: The Self-Publishing Manual by Dan Poynter, Guerrilla Marketing for Writers by Jay Conrad Levinson et al, The Publishing Game by Fern Reiss, How To Publish and Promote Online by M. J. Rose and Angela Adair-Hoy, Beyond the Bookstore by Brian Jud, Jump Start Your Book Sales by Marilyn and Tom Ross, Publish to Win by Jerry Jenkins and Anne Stanton, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About POD by John Harnish, Book Marketing From A-Z by Francine Silverman, and many more.

Shel's seventh book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, received endorsements from Dan Poyner, John Kremer, Marilyn Ross, Fern Reiss, and other experts. Endorsed by futurist Seth Godin, Chcken Soup for the Soul co-creator Jack Canfield, and more than 50 others, his most recent book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (Morgan James, 2016, his second collaboration with the legendary Jay Conrad Levinson, founder of Guerrilla Marketing).

"Shel is the ultimate frugal marketer. If you don't want to spend a lot of money marketing your books--but you still want to sell a ton of books--read his book. He provides lots of doable ideas that don't cost a lot of money but can produce great results."
--John Kremer, editor, Book Marketing Update and author, 1001 Ways to Market Your Books

"A brilliant potpourri of marketing tidbits and little-known tricks of the book publicist's trade."
--Fern Reiss, author, The Publishing Game series

"Dynamite stuff! I have even more respect for you as a knowledgeable colleague after reading Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers! The Google chapter alone is worth the price of the book. And the real-life marketing plans stimulate thinking and present strategies any author or publisher can modify for their own books."
--Marilyn Ross, CEO, SelfPublishingResources.com, book coach, speaker, author The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing/Companion, Jump Start Your Book Sales, etc.

"Plan ahead. Determine the location and size of your market before your write the book and buy this book now...it will show you how,and much more."
--Dan Poynter, The Self-Publishing Manual.

Contact Shel to Discuss Your Project Please click here for phone, online, and postal contact information.

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