Welcome to the canon

Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that your book proposal has been accepted. We receive thousands of submissions per year, from which yours was among those chosen for publication by our on-demand publishing house! We hope you are as excited about this prospect as we are, and we look forward to a long mutual partnership.

Powell's Books, Portland, December 2006, Blake Andrews
The on-demand publishing world is exciting and dynamic, but it does vary in several minor ways from traditional book publishing. Here is what you can expect in the upcoming weeks.

There will of course be a national book-signing tour. We ask that you make a nominal donation to help it become the success that you, a nationally published author, deserve. For first time authors, the standard contribution is the use of your car, the use of friends' and/or relatives' couches for sleeping arrangements (especially if living in New York or Los Angeles), and the use of your credit toward food, gas, and miscellaneous expenses.

The book will be released through our national distribution network which reaches a wide variety of stores, all of which have the potential to make your book a best-seller. We welcome your suggestions for additions to this network. If you enjoy any personal relationships with bookstore owners, or owners of any other sort of store, or owners of any general business, please let us know. We'd love for them to have to opportunity to market your book and other potential best-sellers.

If you have friends who've reached a certain level of financial freedom, have contacts in publishing, are obsessive hoarders, or who sometimes exhibit compulsive buying behavior, please let us know.

Although our national distribution chain already penetrates most regions of the country, we are never content to rest on our laurels. If by chance you have any room in your car during the book-signing tour, we'd appreciate the opportunity to fill the space with your book and other potential best-sellers. Please let us know how much trunk space you might have available so that we can help your book reach the wide audience it deserves.

As part of our national media campaign for your book, we will be sending out a short press release to the author(s) of your book and other interested parties. Normally this press release is in the form of a short email announcing your book's publication, along with a notice of balance due. In addition to this email we welcome your contribution to our national media campaign. Any postcards, announcements, press releases, Facebook or blog notices, branding efforts, televised appearances, or radio promotions that you wish to contribute will of course be accepted.

As stipulated in the publishing contract, all proceeds from the sale of your potential best-seller will be split evenly between you and our publishing house. For example, on a gross sale of $500,000, you will net a cool $250,000. How many copies will your book sell? Exact sales figures are notoriously hard to predict. We expect your book to sell well, but the only way to get a precise count is to proceed with publication. Keep in mind that historically some books have been known to sell tens of millions of copies through many reprints.

As mentioned briefly above, there is a balance due for your book. Before we can proceed with publishing, please remit payment of $832 to our accounting office.

Within a short period after we receive your balance due, you will join the canon of published authors. We needn't remind you what a reputable, exclusive club this has represented in the past.

Welcome to the canon, author! And welcome to our publishing house!