CVPV

I thought it would be a good idea to describe the steps I took to get my first book accepted by one of the worlds largest publishers of computer books.

I am not guaranteeing that you will also achieve published status for your own book by following these steps, but you will certainly improve your chances!

MY FIRST FALTERING STEPS

Let me first give you some background. I am a specialist in computer engineering and I have worked in the computer industry for over 15 years, the last 6 years I have spent online with the Internet. I have worked in many different positions which have exposed me to all sorts of key business computer technologies and software. Most of my jobs have also involved writing technical papers and presentations to give to my peers at computer conferences around the world.

Until last year I had not had any of my papers published other than in the proceedings of the conferences I presented at. I was also not known as a published author and I had not written or published any books!

What I am trying to say is that I am very experienced in computer technology, with a few technical papers under my belt. This is my starting position in becoming a published author.

Last year I discovered a gap in the market for a book that covered a very specific software product called SAP R/3. For most, if not all of you, this will mean absolutely nothing to you (unless you also work in the computer industry). SAP R/3 happens to be a very expensive piece of business software that thousands of companies around the world are using in their businesses everyday.

What I discovered was that there are a large number of books about this software but they all talk about how to install it and set it up, but none of them talked in any detail about how to backup the data it handles in case of a failure! I also felt that with my many years of experience I should be able to research and write about this very topic.

So I found an opportunity I felt I could exploit.

The next question was how to go about marketing this opportunity to a publisher that could sell and distribute it to a sufficiently large market. I had not considered self-publishing as I felt that I could not dedicate the time to it as well as writing.

So what did I do?

Well….I did the following:-

1. I planned the contents of the book using my knowledge of the SAP software and by reading other publications covering similar subjects. At the end of this stage I had a contents list of what the book would cover.

2. I wrote two example chapters using Microsoft Word v6.0 on my home PC. This took me about two months, working on the book part-time. I also had a real job to do don’t forget!

3. I then looked for a potential publisher. I did this by looking at my bookshelf full of computer publications and made a note of the publishers of these books.

4. I then went to amazon.com and did a search on “SAP” to find books already in print on this subject and noted the publishers of those.

5. During this process I discovered that one publisher, Addison Wesley (who recently bought Simon and Schuster in the US), kept appearing as a publisher of computer books. They also appeared on Amazon to be a publisher who were producing a series of books specifically on SAP. I decided to target this publisher. Remember at this stage I am an unpublished, unknown author, with two chapters of a book.
to be continued…