January 26, 2008

Speaker: Jerry Simmons

What Writers Need to Know About Publishing

Writers cannot be successful in today's environment unless they have an understanding of how the marketplace operates, how publishers and booksellers compete, and how to make intelligent decisions about the publication of their book. It is relatively easy to get a book published, but extremely difficult to actually sell books. Writers must have information and learn how to use it to be successful as authors.

Jerry Simmons brings more than 25 years of experience to writers and gives them a glimpse of how the major publishers in this country compete and how any author can use this information to their advantage to maximize the marketing dollars they spend. He provides a unique perspective on how self-published, print-on-demand, and small publishers can be competitive in today's marketplace. Points he covers are:

The industry, changes taking place, and how these impact the writer
Why it is important for writers to know their genre and the marketplace
What writers need to know about marketing and competing for book sales
The importance of understanding numbers and distribution
How to become a participant in the process of publishing
The difficult challenges writers face when bringing books to the marketplace and how to avoid the pitfalls.

Jerry Simmons’s career in publishing began in the fall of 1977 as a sales representative for Random House. In 1979 he joined the book division at Warner Communications, where he spent more than 23 years in sales and management. During that time, the company expanded to become the Time Warner Book Group (sold in 2006 to Hachette Book Group USA, a French company). His sales team distributed over a thousand titles a year from a number of large publishing houses including Little, Brown; Warner Books; Hyperion; Miramax Books; Bulfinch; Back Bay; Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; and Disney. He sold books to some of the largest independent booksellers and mass merchants in the country, as well as managing a sales force nationwide. He retired as vice-president, director field sales in 2003.

Over the years he has worked on books written by many bestselling authors, including Sandra Brown, James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, Tiger Woods, Alice Sebold, Anita Shreve and John Feinstein. Currently he spends his time writing, teaching, and speaking with writers about the importance of understanding the marketplace for selling books and the business of publishing. His commitment is to provide essential information writers need for achieving success. His goal is to help writers become successfully published authors by educating them about the business of publishing and revealing the secrets of the largest booksellers and publishers in the world.

In our morning "Nuts & Bolts" segment, outgoing president of Saguaro RWA Cindy Somerville (Sherrill Quinn) will be our speaker. Details to come.

Sherrill Quinn came back to her true love of writing in February of 2005 when she took an online "How to Write Erotic Romance" class. When the day job started getting too stressful - which meant it just wasn't fun anymore - Sherrill took advantage of some extra money from the sale of her house and took nine months off to focus on her writing. She's written sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal and contemporary with five electronic publishers. With a newly acquired agent at her side, she's looking toward New York while still staying with her love of the electronic publishing venue. Sherrill was raised in Northeast Ohio but now calls Arizona home.

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