Just some more advice posted tonight. This lady works in publishing so she knows what she's talking about.
The first question is, is this publisher he's talking about a license publisher where he would be signing a contract granting them an exclusive license to production rights in exchange for royalties or is it a printer publisher that works with self-pub authors for greater distribution? And if it's the former, does this license publisher do reprint deals (license properties that have been published/self-published before -- had the production rights exploited)? And also if it's a license publisher, does it produce other titles that are anything anywhere in the neighborhood of what he's got? Do they do illustrated books? Oddly shaped/designed print books? Print is expensive, so when you add on to the production costs because it's an unusual production, the publisher has to estimate that into their cost estimates about producing the work. A work as long as this might indeed need to be broken up into multiple volumes.
If it is a license publisher, usually the license contract will give the publisher total control over the production aspects as well as pricing. He won't have a say because he's not paying the costs of producing the work. And if it's a license publisher, and this seems to be a non-fiction work, they will want to know how the work will attract an audience (which presumably he'll document in the proposal.) They will want to know why anyone would want to read this stuff from him specifically, whether he has an audience base/platform/channels to publicize already and what they are, etc.
If instead it's a printing publisher that contracts with authors to do production and wider distribution at joint cost or cost of the author, then it's a different kettle of fish, but even so, such a publisher will probably have specific areas that it assists self-pub authors with and not be interested in other types of non-fiction work.
__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018
|