How to create an editorial - everything you need to know

Nowadays, with the great demand that publishing companies have, the popularity of electronic books and the advanced nature of software, the publication of books has never been so easy. This, however, requires creative and entrepreneurial experience.

Publishing books can be a profitable business if you have the patience to build a consistent book catalog, the time and money necessary to start with the first investments. If you want to know how to create an editorial of any kind, and you want your business to be successful, keep reading this article. You will tell us!

What is your idea

The first thing you have to do is to be clear about what kind of editorial you want to create and what kind of books you want to publish. That is, answer these questions:

Who would be the target audience?
In which country or countries would you sell the books?
What genres would you publish?
In what language or languages would you publish?
Would you publish only new authors or authors already published abroad?
How would your editorial differ?
What is your goal with this editorial?

This last question is extremely important, since it will also depend on what you want to achieve . If you just want to set up a publishing house for pleasure, or even in a certain way as a hobby, it will not be necessary for you to pose and study such questions in such a determined way. You can simply go publishing what you want and how you want. Of course, doing this you would need a lot of luck to make the business or hobby profitable.

Analyze the competition

Once you are clear about your editorial idea, touch the second step: analyze the competition. This is to analyze publishers who have an idea similar to yours. What you will have to check is:

How do they sell the books?
Who is your target audience?
Do they have a website and social networks?
Are they on all social networks? Do not? Why?
Do they respond to users on the networks? How do they do that?
What is your editorial design strategy?
What is your editorial business strategy?
Do you send books home?
How do you have your website set up?
How are your logos?
Do they have slogans? Which are?
How often do they publish?
How many books do you publish per year?
In what bookstores do your books appear?
Do they also sell through the Internet?

All these questions will be useful to us to know how to create our own editorial. The ideal thing to do this type of analysis is to think about what the competition lacks or what they fail, and what you could contribute differently. At this point it can also help you to do a market study to find out what your target audience wants.

Choose a name for your company

Once you know the above, you will need a name for your publisher . This is very important, since choosing a name is not easy. In addition, there are more and more publishers and independent companies, with which the choice of name is something that is increasingly limited. Keep in mind that the name you choose will be part of your brand or brand, so do not choose any one.

We recommend that, if you do not know which name to choose, hire a naming company . The naming companies are dedicated precisely to this, to analyze all the possible names that would fit better for your business based on several eliminatory rounds. Think that if the topic of the name was not so complicated or so important, there would be no professionals or companies dedicated exclusively to this.

Register the name of the publisher

Once you have clear the name (and that is available, of course), touch, without fail, register the name of the publisher. For this you must go to the association that corresponds to your country . Once this is done, you must wait at least 4 months before you can start your business and website.

You also have the option to choose a name that you already have registered in your database, but that is not in use. In this way you would only have to buy it and instantly you could start setting up your business. It's another possibility, but if you want to do things right, we do not recommend it.

It is very important that you know, beforehand, that if you are two or more people in charge of the project, at least one of them will have to register as self-employed . If you will do it alone or alone, you will have to sign up equally.

Editorial business plan

Once you have done the previous step and you have clear the first, we recommend that you start to make an editorial business plan . That is to say:

Think what kind of books you will publish.
Think marketing strategies.
Think about the distribution channels.
Think about how to get the money needed to start the project.

To make a business plan correctly, you also need to make a cash flow . A chash flow is a document that is usually done in an excel document. It tries to calculate what you will have to invest for each book you publish and what you will possibly earn. This is very important not to invest in vain and end up losing money, instead of winning it.

Keep in mind that the first three years will only be for investment . You will not see real gains until after three years of editorial work. We do not know why this is so, but the truth is that it is a formula that always repeats itself.

Create an editorial logo

Once you know the name and have clear the brand strategy or editorial business plan, it's time to choose a logo for your publisher. We recommend that you go to a professional graphic designer for this point, since a logo is not as simple as it seems: it must convey many things, and it is not easy to do it if you do not dedicate yourself to it.

We also recommend that you think about the logo at this point and not before because it could be a bit disastrous and incoherent without knowing the name, or the books you would sell, or what your brand would be (with brand we refer to everything, to your editorial strategy, your editorial voice ... everything).

Although there are many publishers who do not give importance to the name or the process to follow to create a publisher, the best thing is that you do. Most of these editorials end up not getting a great success, or going to ground in no time.

Design the website and make a presence in social networks

It is important that, once you have the logo, you start to spread your editorial on social networks . You do not need to have the web page ready for it yet. It is not necessary that you are in all social networks, but you must be yes or yes on Facebook and Twitter. By doing this your future clients will begin to know you.

To create the web page, you can mount it from scratch or take a WordPress template. However, it will always be more professional if you create it from scratch. For this a web designer can help you.

Hire staff

At first you may not be able to afford this, but it is important that, at least, you know what kind of posts would be necessary in an editorial :

Correctors
Maquetadores.
Designers
Publishers
Commercial.
Translators
Illustrator
Professional readers

However, we know that at the beginning it is most likely that you will play as an "orchestra conductor", that is, assume all those editorial positions yourself.

Create another type of publishers

Maybe you're thinking about setting up an editorial of self-publishing or a virtual or digital publishing house. To create one of these publishers you must follow the same steps as to create an independent publisher: find a name, register it, analyze the competition, create a website, make social media outreach ...

In any case, the self-publishing publishing house and the digital publishing house differ in a couple of things:

Create self-publishing publishing house

The good thing about an editorial of self-publishing is that you do not need to have an economic mattress to start with. This is really one of the most profitable businesses that you can have, since you first receive the money and then invest it.

That is to say, with the money paid by the client for the publication of his book, you can pay the necessary professionals to carry out all the necessary editing processes: correction, layout, cover design ... There are companies that are You can resort to these professionals perform these tasks in a timely manner.

Mount digital publishing

In the case of the digital publisher, it has the advantage that you would save many costs, such as printing and physical distribution (of which, between the distributor and the bookseller, they take 55% of the book's profits, leaving the 45% remaining to distribute between the author, the editor, the commercial, the proofreader, the designer, the layout designer ...).

In addition, ebooks will always be present on the Internet, even if no one buys them. Put another way: with digital books they can only win. While with paper books this is more delicate, because if a book does not sell, the bookstores would withdraw the copies and return them to the publisher, since currently there are many books that are published, they can not have them all exposed and In addition, a bookstore has a limited space, even your store has a limited space.

Therefore, setting up a book company in ebook format could be cheaper than a book publisher. However, today, it is said that they continue selling more books on paper than in ebook .

You also have the option of mounting a paper editorial that includes the possibility of self-publishing and acquiring books in digital format. In fact, if you set up a paper publisher, you should include the option to buy the books in ebook yes or yes.

Tips

Create a cover letter for booksellers. That will make them more predisposed to sell your books.
Contact bloggers and send them free copies of your books to be reviewed in their blogs.
Do the same with the media. It is very important that your book echoes on the Internet.
Know the laws of the edition not to violate at any time with them, especially when making contracts.
Make contacts. Contacts can open many doors, and in the publishing world they are very necessary.