|
Whew! I need to go have a little lie-down just from reading the submission guidelines.
While North Light Books isn't the only art instruction publisher, anyone who goes to the studio bookshelf will probably find what I do, that about 95% of their instructional books are from North Light or Watson-Guptill. When North Light says it can't sell oil instruction books [though it's sold a few to me -- perhaps I bought the only copies], it means that under current market conditions it can't move sufficiently huge quantities through its book club and elsewhere to minimally produce a sufficiently huge net profit figure on the bottom line of the workout sheet. They're in business to make money, nothing wrong with that, but it means that the time is past when a corporate publisher might pick up a book with marginal earning potential but one which would nonetheless be a valuable addition to the body of work on the subject.
One of the biggest rolls of the dice in the business, though, is predicting trends, and who knows what the market will demand two years from now, when your manuscript is ready for submission? At the very least, anyone who is very keen on having a go at publishing a book should, first, be very mindful of the remarks by Chris Saper about the very substantial commitment of time and energy, and then go ahead and try to put together a proposal, in whatever form is required by the various publishers. This usually requires a very detailed outline, sample chapters, and representative artwork, as well as your "sales pitch", which is a showing that what you are proposing is something not already on the shelves (or is in some way superior to what's out there).
If you can't get the proposal together, or even if you can but you didn't find it as enjoyable a process as you'd hoped, count your blessings. I once wanted to build a wooden sailboat of substantial size, but I decided first to build a small wooden sailing pram first, just to see how it went. It went fine, beautiful little lapstrake boat, fun to sail, gets lots of compliments at the marina. And I have standing orders to friends and family that if I ever mention building another boat, I am to have both feet tied to a hawser and I am to be keel-hauled behind a tramp freighter steaming toward some backwater third-world port.
Two of the three best North Light oil instruction books I have were published in 1997, so it hasn't been very long since such books were expected to find a market. The cycle will probably come 'round again. I think you're right not to be discouraged, Karin. If you have a book in you, write it. Wouldn't it be great in two years to have manuscript in hand when some art publisher identifies a trend and puts out a call for oil instruction proposals?
Thinking of titles now,
Steven
|