**TIPS FROM THE TOP*****

The Industry Players.....

In the past decade or so, the publishing industry has been confronted with powerful new competitors. For example, mountains of information and entertainment now stream into readers' homes as a result of the emergence of the Internet and the explosive expansion of cable television. Access has become easy and virtually universal because it leapfrogs boundaries. In the process, it's changed the culture.

Simultaneously, the book-publishing industry has gone through massive changes. It has consolidated dramatically. Imprints that were formerly rivals are now sister companies and partners. Standardized, corporate organizational practices have replaced looser, more hands-on, family-oriented operations. Book publishing has also benefited from waves of technical innovations that have impacted virtually every aspect of the business, including how books are printed, distributed, and sold.

Picture today's book-publishing industry as a sharply pointed triangle. The narrow top of the triangle contains a handful of players, while the bottom portion is densely packed. As the triangle rises, the mass of publishing companies thins.

Six huge, multinational conglomerates dominate the book-publishing business; together, they put out about 80 percent of all books sold. Four of these giants are foreign owned, but all have headquarters in New York City, which is the world book-publishing center. As a result, the big six are considered "New York Publishers," which carries a certain literary cachet, even though they're actually owned by corporations based in Munich, London, or Sydney.

The six publishing colossi are:

Random House, Inc., a division of Bertelsmann AG (a German Corporation), is the world's largest English-language general trade book publisher. It publishes some seventy imprints, including Anchor, Ballantine, Bantam, Broadway, Crown, Dell, Del Ray, Dial, Doubleday, Fawcett, Fodor, Dell, Knopf Group, Pantheon, Random House, Villard, and Vintage. It also owns the Literary Guild.

The Penguin Group, which is owned by Pearson (United Kingdom), is the second largest publisher in the United States and Canada and the largest in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and India. Its imprints include Allen Lane, Avery, Berkley Books, Dutton, Hamish Hamilton, Michael Joseph, Plume, Putnam, Riverhead, and Viking. Penguin also publishes children's brands such as Puffin, Ladybird, Dutton and Grosset & Dunlap. HarperCollins, a subsidiary of the News Corporation Limited (Australia), has annual revenues of over $1 billion. Its imprints include Amistad, Avon, Caedmon, Ecco, Eos, HarperBusiness, HarperCollins, HarperSanFrancisco, Perennial, Rayo, ReganBooks and William Morrow. Its Zondervan unit publishes Bibles and Christian books, and its e-book imprint is PerfectBound.

Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings, (Germany), publishers imprints that include Argon; Bedford; College-Group; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Freeman; Hanley & Belfus; Henry Holt; Hill & Wang; Macmillan; North Point Press; Picador; St. Martin's; Scientific American; Times Books (partnership with New York Times Group); Urban & Fischer, and Worth.

Time Warner Book Group Inc. (United States) owns the Book-of-the- Month Club and the imprints Aspect; Back Bay; Bulfinch; Little, Brown and Company; Press Warner Books, The Mysterious Press and Warner Books (Warner Business Books, Warner Faith, and Warner Vision). It also distributes publishing lines for Hyperion, Arcade, Disney, Harry Abrams, Time-Life Books, and Microsoft.

Simon & Schuster, Inc., is the publishing arm of Viacom (United States). It publishes Aladdin Paperbacks, Atheneum, Atria, Fireside, The Free Press, Little Simon, MTV Books, Margaret K. McElderry, Pocket Books, Scribner, Simon & Schuster, Simon Spotlight, Star Trek, Touchstone, Washington Square Press, and Wall Street Journal Books.

A seventh biggie is Disney Publishing Worldwide (United States), a subsidiary of the entertainment giant the Walt Disney Company. It publishes ABC Daytime Press, ESPN Books, Hyperion, Miramax, and Theia.

In addition to the giant publishers, Dan Poynter reports that some 300 to 400 medium-sized publishers exist, along with more than 85,000 small and self-publishers. With the explosion in electronic books, printing on demand, and other innovations, the field continues to expand.

What You Need to Know

So, how do the changes in publishing affect you? Since information and entertainment are so readily available, publishers have become more selective. The books they publish must be better than what readers can get online or on TV.

Industry consolidation has created fewer publisher/buyers, which could make it harder for you to capture a big publisher's attention. This translates into more competition for you from other authors. It probably means that your proposal will be evaluated on a strict dollars-and-cents basis or that you will have to comply with a bunch of rigid, corporate-imposed demands. It could also limit your flexibility as a writer and your input into the way your book is designed, marketed, and promoted.

Some writers find smaller, even local publishers in their area easier to approach and more accommodating. So when you start identifying potential publishers for your masterpiece, don't just look at the big guys. Be open to all publishers and pay special attention to those who have published books like the one you wish to write. Your publisher just might be in your own backyard! Do some homework.

So writers who hope to be published must find ways to get into the system, and that usually requires them to increase their profiles.

An excerpt from the National Bestseller Author 101: Bestselling Secrets from Top Agents http://www.author101.com