Let's say you're a beginner. You have written several stories, individual chapters or even a full-fledged novel. Friends love your work. Perhaps you even posted your texts on the Internet, and there you also got readers. And one day you wanted to become a real writer: to see your brainchild printed and dressed in a beautiful cover that will have your name on it. It is likely that such a dream has warmed your heart since childhood or youth. Or maybe it appeared only now, when you finished your first full-fledged work, received positive feedback not only from friends, but also from strangers - and so you realized that you know how to interest the reader. Or maybe while browsing the bestseller section of your local bookstore, you realized, “I can do that too!” So the decision was made to publish the book.

bitter truth

Before you start, remember one important thing. It may sound sad to you, but nevertheless it is true: large, venerable publishing houses will never undertake to print books by beginners and authors not known to the general public for free. No matter how talented a beginner you may be, or may seem to yourself, there is still no recipe "How to publish a book in Russia for free."

We'll have to accept it as a fact: publishing is a business like any other; no guaranteed profit - no cooperation. So if you are not yet a bestselling author, then it is pointless to hope for a meeting with open arms.

Finding a genre and publisher

However, no one forbids you to look for ways to publish your book in a major publishing house. Just find the one that suits your subject. Currently the most popular genres are:

1) fantasy;

2) women's novels;

3) detective stories about Russian realities;

4) cooking;

5) children's illustrated books;

6) manuals for self-development and self-education;

7) business leadership;

8) esotericism;

9) mysticism;

10) pseudo-historical novels with patriotic pathos.

When planning how to publish a book in Russia, remember: the less popular is the genre in which you write, the longer it will take to find a suitable publisher. The names and contacts you need can be found on the Internet or when studying the range of bookstores - to be sure, you can use both methods.

Sending the manuscript

If the publisher's website has a special form for authors, it must be completed and submitted. You can also find and download a plan-prospect (basic information about the book and author), fill it out once and then send it to all the publishers you are interested in. If you are looking to get your book published, this could be your chance.

The information about the author and the work must be accompanied by a synopsis (short description) of your work. Usually it takes no more than two or three pages. The synopsis covers the entire work from beginning to end, demonstrating all the advantages of the plot. Writing a good synopsis is not easy enough, so take this issue very seriously, read the recommendations of experienced authors.

You must also provide a sample of your work. Send not the entire manuscript, but only a fragment (no more than 20 pages). Each manuscript can take up to six months to review, so be patient if you're looking for ways to get your book published to the public's liking. True, if you manage to do this, the wait, unfortunately, will not end there. Then you will need to patiently wait for the publication date of your book, because the publisher has its own

We participate in the competition

In various genres are held annually. Usually they are organized by literary magazines or various foundations, less often by publishing houses. Some events accept entries for free, others for a small fee. Winning a competition is one of the ways

As an example of annual competitions, one can name: “Eurocon” and “Quasar” (works in the “fiction” genre), “Written with a pen” (organized by the literary portal of the same name), “High Heels” (prose written by women) and various events from the Russian Union of Writers.

Choose the competition that best suits your writing genre. Please read the terms and conditions carefully and follow them exactly. Make sure that your work is original in its idea and images of characters, as well as of high quality in terms of style and norms of the Russian language.

The works of the contestants are judged by a jury consisting, as a rule, of recognized writers, as well as representatives of publishing houses and magazines. Finalists usually receive the right to publish their work in a publishing house or literary magazine. Therefore, participation in a literary competition is an opportunity to attract the attention of competent and influential people.

For those who write for children and teenagers

The New Children's Book, an annual competition from Rosman Publishing, could be your chance if you're looking to publish a book for children and teens. Perhaps it is your work, now lying in obscurity on a computer hard drive, that in the future will be able to become a laureate of a competition, be published by a well-known publishing house and get a real chance of access to an impressive number of young readers. Don't be afraid to look for a free way to publish a children's book written by you.

Publishing at our own expense

Perhaps you are an extremely active person by nature and are not accustomed to waiting for "miracles from heaven" in the form of a generous philanthropist, a kind publisher, or your victory in an accidental literary competition. In this case, you will find useful advice on how to publish your book at your own expense.

For starters - an option for those who just want to see their favorite creation in the form of a full-fledged book. In this case, you can simply order from the printing house and pay for the release of several copies from your own pocket: keep one or two, distribute the rest to friends and family. But even such a seemingly simple event as writing and publishing a book takes time. First of all, calculate how you can save your money on preparing the book for printing.

Prepress

This process includes the following steps:

• editorial proofreading of the text (for errors and typos);
• layout (correct design of all spaces, intervals, paragraphs, headers and footers and other graphic components);
• book cover design
• and its turnover (author, title, abstract and imprint).

Of course, all these operations can be performed at a printing house for an appropriate fee, but something can also be done on a home computer.

On the other hand, if you want the book to look really real, it makes sense to entrust the whole process to professionals. Sometimes it is advantageous to give a manuscript for prepress processing to one publishing house, and then print it in another place using ready-made layouts.

How much is the first print run?

So, you have prepared the layout of your book, but how much money will you have to invest in the release of your first, even a small, edition? Its cost depends on the following parameters:

• how many copyright sheets are in the publication (1 = 40,000 characters with spaces; you can see the value for your work in Word);
• what circulation is planned;
• what type of cover (hard or soft; in the first case, it will come out more beautiful and practical, but more expensive).
• quality of paper for the text block and materials for the cover;
• brilliance of the future edition (if the cover is planned to be colored);
• how labor-intensive prepress will be (for example, the presence of illustrations).

As for the time for publication (including editing, design, layout and printing), on average this process takes from 3 to 6 months. If you wish, you can reduce the waiting time, but this will mean additional costs.

Writer earnings

And now - an option for those authors who plan to earn money as a writer. In general, this is fair: you honestly worked, wrote, invested yourself - and your work should be paid. Another question is how specific the book market is and how to sell a book in modern conditions. After all, paradoxically, now only the lazy do not write, and there are simply not enough readers for everyone.

To take the first step, you need to promote your book. Do not expect others to do it for you - a publisher or a literary agent - because, as we already found out at the very beginning, no one will publish and promote a little-known author for free. If you want to get a positive result, you will have to take up the matter yourself.

book sale

To get started, to be eligible to sell a published book, you need to obtain an International Standard ISBN number. You can do this in the Russian Book Chamber. It is required to pay a certain fee for the service, as well as submit documents giving you the right to carry out publishing activities.

You are now ready to sell the book. You can come to a bookstore and try to interest the owner in order to conclude a contract for implementation. When setting the cost, proceed from the fact that after percentage markups (from the publisher and the store), the book will cost twice as much as it cost to produce it. For example, if you personally issue a circulation cost 150 rubles. for 1 copy, then on the shelf of the bookstore your creation will be exhibited at a price of 300 rubles. But how big is the percentage of people who will buy an unknown book in this case? Therefore, before releasing your brainchild to the market, you need to make a name for yourself as an author. Next - how to publish an e-book.

Promotion on the Internet

The easiest way to achieve recognition for yourself and your book is on the World Wide Web, or at least its Russian-speaking segment. There are several ways to publish an e-book. Among them:

• e-book in its purest form;
• print on demand;
• audiobook.

In order for your book to become popular enough to sell, you need to draw attention to it. There are many ways to publish an e-book. One of them is placement in digital libraries, for example: Aldebaran, Fanzin, Litportal, FictionBook, Bookz.ru, etc. Separate online libraries (Librusek, Litres) find new authors themselves, popular in the network, and post their work.

However, the main profit in distributing the electronic version of the book is not at all financial. The more downloads, the more readers will know about your book. And the higher the chances of selling it in paper version: you will earn a name for yourself, and you will have something to offer the publisher.

There is a misconception that a person will never buy a paper version of a book that he has already downloaded in electronic form for free. In fact, readers are happy to purchase in their home library those works that they plan to reread. The latter already depends on you as a skilled author.

If you're looking for a way to sell an eBook, look no further than print-on-demand. In this case, a fragment of the book (several chapters, cover, etc.) is posted on the site, and the interested reader pays for his own copy, which is specially printed for him.

One way to sell an e-book is to make an audio version. You can do this both in the studio and at home. Audiobooks are distributed most often in online stores in the form of a paid download link. Audiobooks are in demand, but this market is still underdeveloped, and therefore there is less competition, which is a significant plus.

One day an idea popped into your mind. And you asked yourself: “How to publish your book?” If you have already become interested in the answer to this question, then you are ready to set yourself the task of publishing. And by putting it, you can find solutions.

When an author creates a work, it is unlikely that he is going to keep it in his desk drawer for a long time. There is always a plan - to find the strength in yourself to publish a book. And when it comes down to it, the first thing authors do is start looking for the right publisher. Compare: prices, working conditions, reputation of publishing houses. And now, information has been received, dozens of calculations, but the author has a thought: “Why not publish the book for free? After all, my book can sell well and bring profit to both the publisher and me. Such authors will be interested in learning how to do this.

First of all, you need to send the manuscript to different publishers and try to convince them that the book will sell well. At the same time, it is advisable to refer to the positive feedback from members of the author's social groups who have read the book or some other expert opinions. But usually the author will hear from publishers in response a refusal, criticism, or advice to print a circulation at his own expense and distribute it to friends. However, those who have created a really interesting book and have a strong desire to publish it for free can still try this option.

Cooperation with a publishing house

• Compose a good appeal. The form that publishers usually post on their websites will help here;
• Prepare the manuscript in electronic form, a short and complete synopsis and annotations to them. When compiling the latter, you should make an effort and use all your creative thinking. Attracting the attention of publishers means significantly increasing the chances of success;
• Find reasons to convince the publisher that your book is a real bestseller and its sales will exceed all expectations;
• Get positive reviews from well-established authors and pass them on to the publisher.

Print a free book in Yustitsinform

Yustitsinform publishing house has been providing professional publishing services for more than a quarter of a century. Our qualified specialists at a high level will fulfill any order. We consider all the proposals received by us and are ready to offer optimal conditions for publishing, including free of charge. Scientific and artistic works published under the Yustitsinform logo are pleasant to hold, read and give. In order to publish a book for free in Yustitsinform, it must meet one of the following criteria:

• The book has already been published at the expense of the author in Yustitsinform, sold through Yustitsinform's sales channels and showed excellent sales results;
• The book is a scientific work on legal topics and the Yustitsinform publishing house is interested in acquiring exclusive rights to the work.

18 min

18 min

Text by Maria Ovseets, website journalist

Cover photo: Firestock.ru

Who and why should write a book, is it possible to make money on it and how to make the publisher interested in your manuscript. We are talking exclusively about business literature and books about self-development. Fiction is a completely different story.

Why write a book?

You may have noticed that some entrepreneurs and professionals are talked about more than others. Interviews, comments as experts, TV broadcasts. Someone will say: "Lucky." But most likely, a person is engaged in his personal brand.

“A book is a great way to express yourself, as well as a good opportunity to structure what is in your head, to “put everything in order”. It is worth writing a book if you can induce a person to action by your personal example - to improve life, for example, or give him valuable knowledge in the area in which you are a professional.

It doesn't matter who you are - a psychologist, an artist, a cosmetologist or an entrepreneur. If you have a valuable store of knowledge, you can write a book.

Here are just a few examples:

Natalie Ratkowski - illustrator, designer, author "Draw every day" , "Allow yourself to create" , "Profession - illustrator" .

Maxim Ilyakhov - editor of Artem Gorbunov Design Bureau, creator of the service "Glavred", book author " Write, abbreviate: How to create strong copy .

Alexander Levitas - marketing consultant, business coach, author of books "Express Marketing" , "More money from your business" .

Maxim Batyrev - famous Russian manager, author of the book « 45 manager tattoos » , "Agreed" !

How to self-publish a book

You need a manuscript, printing house and money. All costs in this case are borne by you: editing, cover design, layout, printing. You will also have to deal with the distribution and sale of the circulation yourself.

“If a person has a clear goal, why he needs a paper book, then the distribution issue will be pretty clear. I wrote a book for those who come to study at our school - it is clear that I will distribute it through these people.

If the author expects to sell the book through bookstores, I advise you to find out in advance their attitude to this, so that there are no disappointments. Usually, large organizations do not like to deal with "loners" (one commodity item) and can simply refuse. Business registration may also be required.

Warehouse space at stores is limited. You will have 5 copies for sale, and in a month they will sell 2 or 3. To sell a lot of books, you will have to find a dozen, if not more stores, and follow the "movement of goods." And separately with the accounting departments to solve the issue of receiving money. In general, the "book trade" is a separate business, and if you get involved in it, you will have to dive into the business completely.

It can take an average of six months to a year to publish a book.

»

Through special services

For example, Ridero. This is a digital platform for self-publishing books without intermediaries. Allows authors of any genre to turn a text file (for example, in doc format) into a laid-out electronic or paper book in a few minutes for free and place it in online bookstores (provided that the book passes moderation, this process takes an average of 5 days). Ridero, together with the Ozon online store, provides distribution of paper books from 1 copy without pre-printing the circulation.

You don't have to pay anything at the initial stage. Ridero receives a commission from the sale of each copy of your book: the commission of stores is deducted from the price, the cost of printing (in the case of paper copies), the author receives 80% from the rest, Ridero - 20%.

The service also offers paid services: promotion, book trailer creation, proofreading, cover design, etc.

When to Contact a Publisher

“Ideally, when there is a concept thought out to the smallest detail and a couple of chapters. In case of interest, the publisher will have time to correct the direction. Or, having made a circle of honor on the electronic mailboxes of publishers, the author will understand something for himself. This is not a universal recommendation, but my personal opinion based on many years of experience with non-fiction."

How to find a publisher

“Go to a bookstore, find the books that best suit your subject (at the same time you will see how many there really are). Then look up who publishes and find a publisher online. Usually, if publishers are interested in working with authors from outside, there is a special form on the site that you can fill out and send.

Such a form - prospectus plan can be downloaded from our website. site. She is very comfortable. A prospectus plan can be used as a sample. It is better, after sending the application, to find the phone number of the person in charge of this or that direction, and call him, this will draw attention to you.

If you start promoting your text as an e-book or blog on the Internet and gain popularity, the publisher will find you.”

Writing for money in Russia is not an easy task

»

Chance to get into the publishing house

“We evaluate the topic and the main idea of ​​the book, the value of the content, the author's style, the situation on the topic on the market, the budget of the project, which depends on the complexity of the preparation, we look at who the author is. It's a very individual process. On the whole, we should like the book. The author of "Alpina" is a smart professional who understands his subject area, who knows how to put words into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs in such a way that after reading his book, the reader will be enriched with new knowledge, inspired to accomplish and set off to make himself and the world a better place.

We receive 20-25 applications per week through the form on the website or letters from potential authors directly, which means up to 100 per month, more than 1,000 per year. In 2015, we published a record number of "gravity" authors - 9 books. Usually no more than 5 on average.

Is it possible to make money from a book

“Writing for money in Russia is not an easy task. We usually work with the author without an advance and on a royalty basis - a percentage of the sale of copies of the book. Standard royalty rate: 10% of the wholesale price of a paper book, 25% of the net proceeds of an electronic book. The suggested retail price (the one you should see in a store if he listens to the publisher) is usually more than double the wholesale price. That is, if a book costs 790 rubles on a store shelf, then we will consider royalties from 324 rubles to the author. In recent years, the first print run usually does not exceed 2,000 copies.

Authors experience

“I wrote the book in my free time, sometimes on weekends. Unfortunately, I couldn't write every day. In total, the work took 2 years. After the book was ready, I read a lot of advice on how to publish it. One of them said: if your book is suitable for some series of a publisher, recommend it to them.

In 2014, only MIF had a series of business novels, but my offer was promptly refused, explaining that they sell business novels the worst. A little frustrated, I made a list of all business publishers in Russia and started sending them requests to publish the book. It took a couple of months to find publishers and contacts, fill out various forms on websites, and fulfill the requirements for submitting a manuscript. Most of the inquiries remained unanswered.

Several publishing houses offered to publish the book at my expense, despite the fact that no one asked for or read the manuscript of the book. One editor bluntly wrote that if I were a famous blogger (with tens of thousands of followers) or a media personality, they would even print photos of my pets or mom's recipes.

Publishing houses are afraid to take the risk of publishing an unknown author, and here there was a double risk - an unknown author and a rare genre at the intersection of business and fiction.

As a result, when I was ready to post the book for free on my website, I remembered that I did not receive a response from the Eksmo publishing house, although their website says that they respond within a month. I called them to clarify the fate of my manuscript. It turned out that the editor did not see it and asked to send it again.

A few months later, the editor replied that she liked the book and would talk to management about publishing it. A few months later, he received another refusal: the publishing house did not know how to market a business novel.

Since I am a professional marketer, I decided to prepare a plan for promoting the book myself. Made and sent it to the editor. Two years later, Eksmo agreed to publish my book.

Few changes were made to the manuscript. It took about half a year to prepare the layout, coordinate the cover and print the book. The name of the book "Marketing Girl" was also suggested by the publisher, initially I simply called the manuscript "Marketing Novel".

The circulation of the book is 3,000 copies. Most sold out. The book was a bestseller on ozon.ru and litres.ru. On the website of the electronic library mybook it has over 14,000 readers. According to my calculations, the book was read by about 20,000 people.

I personally made a little less than a month's salary from the book. You can make money from business literature only if you have a series of books or use a book for self-promotion.

“They published the book on their own. The production process in my case was easy to reproduce by the staff of our company: editor, proofreader, layout designer - I have all these specialists. I spent 10 minutes drawing the cover. The services of the printing house are not cheap, but they do not ruin either - about 150 rubles per copy turned out.

Approximately 1,000 readers of the digital version. 100 copies printed. 20 left in the office, the rest sold out in a day at two conferences. They sold on trust: they put stacks of books, hung a poster “Take now - pay later”, instructions on how to pay were put in each book. About 50% of those who took paid (the rest are freeloaders, okay). Circulation dropped out. And the goal of making money was not in front of me. ”

Last tip...

The story of a Kazan entrepreneur about an attempt to enter the book market without the support of popular publishers.

To bookmarks

The textbook has 384 pages, 40 lessons, 384 hieroglyphs.

Who are we

Our company is called Laoshi, we teach Chinese: we build a network of Chinese language schools in Russia and Ukraine, we teach Chinese online, and we also develop learning materials.

Why I decided to write a Chinese textbook

In Russia, the methods of teaching the Chinese language are very poorly developed. In our courses, we tried different textbooks. But the ideal was not found: the lessons are too long, the vocabulary is out of date, some good books cannot be bought in Russia. And almost all of them have a weak design.

In short, the decision was made as follows:

All textbooks suck, let's write a new one?

It was decided that the new textbook would have a well-thought-out methodology and structure, a modern set of words, and a pleasant design. It is called “Chinese with Laoshi. Zero to HSK 2 is a primer for the first 8-10 months of study.

Why no publisher

I was looking for information about publishing books - how, where, how much. It turned out that there is almost no information on the Internet. The book market turned out to be closed and conservative.

Tried to communicate with popular publishers. The essence of their proposals was similar - I create content for which I am paid about 150 thousand rubles. The publishing house takes over the design and layout and makes another ordinary textbook or tutorial, which are in abundance on the bookshelves. At the same time, the rights to distribute books are transferred to the publishing house. That is, even for our students, we would have to buy books in bulk from the publishing house.

This resulted in two problems:

• just content (texts and exercises) is only half the work. It is important to present it correctly, structure it, give advice in time, select the right illustrations. It was possible to negotiate with the publishing house and develop the design, make up and illustrate the book ourselves, but then we would be in a deep minus.

• as the author of the textbook, I would have received 150 thousand rubles and a small percentage of sales. Considering that the Chinese language is not as popular as books, for example, by Dontsova, it would not have been possible to make money. In an article about the book “Write. Shorten" Maxim Ilyakhov writes that "the authors do not earn."

I want to make a quality product and make money on it. Therefore, I decided to go through all the stages on my own: write content, find money, find the right performers, a printing house, learn how to sell Chinese textbooks.

Search for a designer and layout designer

Some materials for the textbook were already ready - I wrote them for the lessons for Laoshi.ru. Therefore, I decided first of all to find a designer for the textbook. I searched for acquaintances, made a mailing list for the subscriber base. Several dozen people wrote with the same questions - what is the budget, what needs to be done. And I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know what the budget was. So I searched further.

In parallel, a guy wrote to me who asked questions by mail and via Skype. I asked for a long time, asking how we conduct classes at school, what materials we teach now, what content is available and what, ideally, I would like to receive. And then he sent a document on several pages, where he described his understanding of the problem.

I saw this for the first time - Alexey not only understood and accepted my thoughts, but developed the idea, structured it. This is how an art director and designer appeared in the Laoshi team. Lyosha himself typesetted the first textbook, because layout was inextricably linked with design.

Design search

In June and July 2016, we worked on the understanding of the task, made plans and took a little rest after a working year. Started working in August.

We made several versions of the design and made up all the content that was at that time.

Option 1

Option 2

But I didn't like it. In November, Lyosha flew from Ukraine to Kazan to work together for a month.

Greeted in Kazan with a traditional souvenir - a skullcap

For a month of searching, the problem was not solved. Then we decided to go on a New Year's trip to China. They left on December 26 and returned at the end of January.

Immediately upon arrival, we "found" what we were looking for - the perfect textbook design for us. Since Lyosha was engaged in both design and layout, things went rather slowly.

For us, design is not just colors and pictures, but first of all, a way of presenting material, a certain impact on readers. With the help of design, we have solved the main problems of Chinese textbooks:

• Boring grammar. We highlighted it in bright yellow, clearly structured it, and added explanatory illustrations. Now grammar is perceived as something important and simple. They tested it - the students scroll from one yellow spread to another, they became interested.

• Reading by transcription. This is a problem for all beginners - it is easier to read transcription than hieroglyphs. To encourage students to read correctly, we have completely removed transcription from the texts. But the problem remained - new words were also read by transcription. The standard block of new words in textbooks consists of three columns - the word in hieroglyphs, transcription, translation. They rearranged - the transcription was placed in the third column. The problem was solved - now the eye clings to hieroglyphs and translation, and the transcription is perceived as additional information.

Traditional textbook - the first version of "Laoshi" - the final version of "Laoshi"

• Bad design. Ordinary textbooks are perceived as hundreds of pages of boring text. Focusing on the quality of the publication and the benefit for the student, we have created a textbook that encourages and motivates the study of Chinese.

One of the spreads with grammar

Similarly, we worked on other sections and blocks.

Sometimes we force students to spin the textbook to break them from the routine.

Content writing

Since there was no clear understanding of the final result, I did a lot of content work during the layout process. Often ready-made lessons had to be redone for design. Sometimes, due to the replacement of a word in one lesson, 20-30 subsequent texts had to be rewritten. The work was not that difficult, but very voluminous.

To finish faster, I involved my colleague Natasha in the content, she helped formulate grammar and write exercises.

Tutorial illustration

Illustrating the textbook turned out to be a labor-intensive and expensive stage.

The first artist, Kostya, worked for a long time with the title pictures of the lessons, drew a flyleaf. We did not understand each other well, so the illustration dragged on for several months. We parted ways with Kostya.

Bookend booklet

We have been looking for a second artist for a long time. The problem is that many people can draw beautifully and with high quality. But not everyone can draw more than a hundred illustrations in a short time. Then we found Alexandra, she was able to.

She was able to do even more - she became not just an artist, but an illustrator. For example, we give her a task: “We need to illustrate the note “You cannot combine verbs with the help of the union 和””. And it produces this picture:

The second batch of illustrations took us a little over two months. Kostya I paid 80 thousand rubles, sachet about 100 000.

Choice of printing house, paper and cover, assignment of ISBN, UDC and LBC

Since March, we started looking for a printing house. I wanted to find something closer, ideally - in Kazan, so that it would be easier with delivery. We found the Idel-Press printing house in Kazan. At the meeting, I realized that the sales department is completely incompetent. They didn’t explain anything, didn’t show examples of paper, but offered to look at examples of books in any bookstore, and then just tell them the thickness of the paper.

We changed the strategy - we went to Read the City, chose the best books in terms of print and paper quality. So we went to the printing house in Tver "Paretto-Print". There we were promptly counted the order, called, wrote. When I arrived at the printing house in the summer, I was offered to choose paper and cover from catalogs.

We chose offset paper (we did not consider gloss, because it is difficult to write on it), 80 gr, the whitest and highest quality. Integral cover with soft-touch film and UV varnish. And also with a yellow bookmark and yellow sewing. Choose what you like, pay no attention to the cost. The printing house took over the assignment of ISBN, there were no problems with this. True, I had to comply with the law and send 17 copies of the textbook to the book chamber. And they learned the UDC and LBC codes in the nearest library.

Editing and proofreading (it was AD)

When the texts were ready, I gave them to some Chinese to read. I didn't agree with all the edits. The fact is that the book is intended for beginners. When you have 50 words left, you have to compromise. Therefore, the texts in the textbook are correct, but not always the way the Chinese would write them.

We proofread and corrected Russian texts ourselves. There were a lot of mistakes and oversights. Before printing, we turned to a professional proofreader and chose corrector.ru. Behind 12 thousand rubles they got to work. Many errors were found, but even more were not found. At first, I myself discovered several dozen errors.

Already on color proofs, I saw another mistake, the designer found another one. We asked the printer for a day of respite to fix everything. In the evening, five people again sat down to check for errors and during the night they found more than 120 errors, typos and shortcomings! Unfortunately, not everything was found, something was found after printing. Mistakes were brought to Errata's page.

Printing in a printing house

At the end of June, we sent the file to be prepared for printing. There were comments on colors and illustrations, a little more than a week I had to correct errors and coordinate details.

On July 6, the file was finally handed over to the printing house. Under the contract, the maximum printing period is 1 month, but we were promised to print “in the next few days”. As a result, the circulation was ready only on August 15.

For the delay, the printing house offered us 58 copies over the circulation free of charge. We agreed. Printing houses always print a little more books than they should. The calculation is that in the event of a marriage there will be something to replace the damaged copies. As a result, books often remain, this is called overcirculation.

The initial calculation of the cost of circulation was as follows:

• 500 pieces - 740.40 rubles per book

• 1000 pieces - 435.50 rubles per book

• 2000 pieces - 309.60 rubles per book

• 3000 pieces - 271.20 rubles per book

In our case, the circulation of 2000 books turned out to be optimal in terms of price and quantity. General circulation cost turned out 600 with little thousand rubles. Before printing, they paid 60%, another 40% had to be paid after receiving a letter about the readiness of the circulation.

In order not to spend 10 days on delivery, I went to Tver myself. There he found a Gazelle, which delivered the books to Kazan the next morning. I had to unload them to our Kazan apartment, as there is no warehouse yet. Unloaded almost 2 tons of books with friends, raised to the seventh floor.

The books were packed in packs of five. When unpacking, they found a marriage, so I had to unpack everything, sort it and pack it back. Total turned out 50 books with a strong marriage for which the printing house returned the money. Near 50 pieces were with minor damage. We use them as test samples in our schools. Marriage amounted to 5% of the circulation.

Audio recording

There are many texts, words and exercises in the textbook that needed to be voiced. To do this, they rented a studio in Kazan, invited the Chinese, and made the necessary recordings. It took over 15 hours to record in the studio. And for processing, cutting and assembling sounds - more than three weeks of my daily work. I collected the audio myself, since there was no one to trust.

Chinese Nadia voices new words

The most common question from textbook buyers is “Where is the disk?” We still have a meme about this in our team. We believe that CDs are very outdated, so all the sounds are posted on the Internet. Audio can be downloaded or listened to online, there is even a playlist on VKontakte.

Pre-orders and sales

They financed the work at the expense of proceeds from Chinese language courses, sometimes they had to borrow money from relatives. Closer to the press, he even took out a loan for 500 thousand rubles.

When the print run was in the printing house, we prepared a page on Tilda and opened a pre-order. In 1 month, 146 books were sold on pre-orders. In addition to books, they offered a package: a book + a subscription to the Laoshi.ru service, as well as paying for one year of study at the Laoshi school with a discount of almost 50%. Managed to raise about 400 thousand rubles. Thanks to everyone who believed in us!

We sell part of the books in Laoshi schools. But most of the circulation you need to sell yourself. To do this, we made a simple online store on the constructor, set up advertising. We sell two to six books a day but there are quiet days.

In parallel, we are fighting to get into bookstores. We were placed by the Tatarstan network “Dom Knigi”, we are sold in their stores “Kniga Plus”. We are in communication with Ozon and the Moscow network Respublika. Typically, book chains work with publishers and wholesalers who supply them with hundreds of titles of books. And they are not interested in working directly with the publisher of one book. So, Ozon "threw off" the application through the feedback form to its wholesaler partner, who has been dragging on the signing of the contract for the third month.

Until "Chitay-Gorod" and "Bukvoed" it is not yet possible to reach out. They belong to the Eksmo company, which is considered rather clumsy in the market.

We offer textbooks to language schools directly, and there are some successes. But while such sales do not pull even a hundred books. One of the problems is that language schools need not just a primer, but a whole course. Therefore, for the textbook, we have released recipes for training hieroglyphs. I am currently working on the second volume of the course and have planned four textbooks in total.

It is important that we have adherents who write, buy, recommend and wait for the next editions of Laoshi. There are many Chinese teachers and tutors among them. We made a page where we collect