Publishing


We bring your fuzzy idea into a real book that reaches people, and which people want to read.

You've been wanting to write a book, but you're stuck.

You have a manuscript, but you're not sure how to publish.

Do you go with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing? Or self-publish? Or find a hybrid publisher? Or a traditional publisher? Many options, but you're not too sure what to choose. 

You've an idea, but you just don't have time to write. 

You've a great idea, and you know that it will help your career. But you have no idea how you're going to bring it to life, with all the other work that you have to do. 

You've been rejected by publishers, and you don't know how to move forward.

You have been receiving more and more rejection letters. You now do not know what to do. Do you send out to more publishers, and hope someone takes it? 

You're not sure if you want to spend the money for publishing. 

You've seen people paying money for publishing, and you're not sure if it's going to be worth it. Isn't that cheating?

You're likely to be at one of 3 stages.

Writer in waiting

You have an idea in your head, but you've not gotten down to writing it. You have little time, or you may not be sure how to structure it. 

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Writer, with manuscript 

You have a manuscript, but you've been rejected by publishers. You've sent query letters, and you're not too sure how to proceed.

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Writer, with few sales

You've written, published, but somehow, you've not gotten as many sales as you would have liked. You're not sure how best to move. 

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You're a writer in waiting. 

You want to write, but you don't know how to start.

What you need is Book Development.

01

  • This is the stage we call Idea Crafting. It's the part where you're playing around with some ideas. 
  • But you can't move out of this stage until you're super sure of two things. Firstly, who your reader is, and what their explicit pain point is. You need to know what keeps them up at night. How they are currently solving it. And what part of their problem still isn't solved. Because your book is going to need to solve it... or they won't buy it. 
  • Then you need to know what your big idea is. You can't exit this stage until you stumble on the big idea that makes your ideal reader go, 'Oh, I never thought of that before.' 

02

  • Now that we know your reader, and your idea, we go into Story Development.
  • This is where you put down all your arguments, stories, and evidences onto a single big sheet of paper. Imagine a wall filled with post-its, with each color representing a different type of idea. Purple might mean anecdotes, blue might mean scientific evidence, and yellow might be your main argument. 
  • With those post-its on the wall, you develop the story that works for your readers. You exit this stage when you have a ready outline of your book that puts together your most compelling ideas, and flows well. 

03

  • You're now working on your book. 
  • From time to time, you're going to need to work with your development editor to figure out if the execution of your writing, is following the course of the outline, and whether it really is a compelling read. 
  • You exit this stage when you finally have the manuscript in hand. 

you're a Writer with a manuscript

You need to sell your book or increase its reach. 

Here's what we did for ourselves.

In 2020, I (John) thought - wouldn't it be nice if I wrote a book for social workers? Except... this book would be different. I had read all the books for social workers and they were long and boring. This book was going to be fun. Very fun. 

  • We want to include exercises like the one below.
  • We wanted comics that made it more fun. 
  • We wanted graphics that made the concepts easily digestible. 

The problem was, this wasn't going to sell. Thinking that we had a great idea, I wrote to publishers to ask them to consider the book, but none of them were willing to take the book. They said it looked too unprofessional. It wasn't what they were looking for! 

Pah! I ended up self-publishing it. 

We pushed it from idea to publishing.

  • We first spoke to ideal readers to understand what they wanted, and what was the trouble with the current books in the market. 
  • We hired a graphic designer to start working on the design. 
  • We then kept reworking the manuscript over the next 1.5 years. 
  • We decided to self-publish as no publisher we approached wanted to take it. 

We got people to take note of it. 

  • We did everything we could to get more attention on it. We pitched articles and appeared on the most popular sites for social workers, like The New Social Worker.
  • We wrote articles in the mainstream media about social work, depression, and mental health, to get more people to take note of this issue. We appeared in the likes of The Straits Times, TODAY, and Channel News Asia.
  • We pitched the radio, and appeared on radio. 
  • We had a launch event where we had to invite everyone, including my mother. We invited 200, and got 110 in the room. We ran in-person events where we talked about the book. 

We launched Take Heart in Orchard Central, the swankiest part of the city, and only managed to sell 100 books.

You're a writer, but sales are low.

Write it and they will come, doesn't seem to work. 

Yes, we got it. We were there. We wrote a great book (or at least we thought it was great), and realised that no one was buying it. And we had no idea why this was so. What were we not doing? 

Let's take my own example to find out. 

We only made $21.90 over 2 years from selling becoming better.

  • We had no idea why. As you can see above, we marketed, got on radio, and even on mainstream media, but no one seemed to want to buy it. What was happening? 
  • We soon realised that we were not appearing on searches where the intent was high. For example, social workers who wanted such books were not able to discover these books. 

We started by reaching more of our ideal readers 

  • We started to write articles on what the best books were for social workers. Yes, you could say that we were tooting our own horn, but we genuinely believed that we had a good book that was different from what everyone else found on the market. 
  • When they Googled 'best books for social workers', we showed up. 
  • We also did some giveaways in social worker communities to get more of them to engage with our work.
  • Eventually, we got more and more sales. We went from 1 per quarter to 4 per month. Not high, but better than nothing! 

What's the method to selling more books?

1. Write a good book

This might look like basic advice, but it's not easy. Writing a good book that appeals to readers is harder than it looks. It requires you to understand where the reader biggest pain points are, and to systematically target them. 

2. Plan a launch 

You can't just leave it to chance. You have to launch it at an event, get the radio, media to cover it, and hopefully generate more interest about the book. 

3. Keep talking about your book

Go everywhere, and talk about your book. Start practising with your dog. If you don't have a dog, then do a mirror. Pushing a book is forever. 

4. Don't give up on your book

It's easy to give up on your book. Especially after a few months of marketing, and realising that it's not getting anywhere. Don't. Keep going. You will get better. 

A book is forever.

Write a must-read that changes the life of your reader.

Publishing

Once your manuscript is done, there is a still a long way before it becomes an actual book.

Even after the manuscript has been scrupulous edited, proof-read and beta-read, there are still many things to be done before you can hold your book in your hands. 

There is still cover design, interior formatting, layout, writing front and back matter, generating ISBN codes even before the manuscript can go to print. 

There is a lot more to printing a book then just writing it.

The Problem

You have a manuscript but you don't know what to do with your document.

How do you get your book into bookstores and into readers' hands?

The Solution

Gutenhag is a hybrid publishing house, we will provide all the professional services needed to turn your manuscript into a book, and all you need to do is focus on the writing itself.

Gutenhag takes an author-centric approach to publishing, believing in bringing an author's vision to life in the best way possible. With us, authors retain creative control of self-publishing but have access to professional support of traditional publishing. 

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