This post is part one of a series.

One of my most important life goals has been to share some of the knowledge and wisdom I have learned over my life as a father, pediatric pulmonologist, counselor of children, adolescents and young adults (including through instruction in self-hypnosis), and active member of the Jewish community.

As I have always enjoyed writing, it seemed that creating a book about my experiences would be a good way to reach a wider audience. I suspect that many of Psychology Today’s readers and writers have similarly contemplated or chosen to write books as a way of sharing their ideas.

For this reason, I am offering this three-part blog series about some of my experiences as an author of multiple books written for the public, in the hope that others can benefit from reviewing some of the lessons I learned, including some unwelcome surprises.

Traditional or Self-Publishing

I ended up reading extensively about writing and publishing non-fiction books, and hired a professional writer to help me present my ideas and experiences in the most effective way.

In my first book, I wanted to share some of my medical success stories with hypnosis to inform parents that there are effective non-medication alternatives for the treatment of many childhood disorders, including anxiety, chronic abdominal pain, bedwetting, insomnia, and shortness of breath.

I titled this book *Journey to the Center, *with a subtitle of Changing Children’s Lives with Hypnosis. The title was intended to convey that I teach children how to reach into the center of their beings to work with their inner selves.

An early decision point was whether to aim to find a traditional publisher or self-publish. I found out that since self-publishing became an industry in the 1990s, the number of published authors has increased dramatically.

A small number of authors have had great success with self-publishing, largely because they had a very active social media presence, were well-known before they published their book, or heavily promoted their books through their professional business ventures or through extensive marketing campaigns.

However, most self-published books sell only 100-500 copies. Reasons for the low number of sales include:

• Many self-published books are not written or edited well. This may be related to the lack of screening of books by a neutral party.
• Self-published books often have poorly designed covers, amateurish inside layout, and poor-quality binding and paper.
• Recently, the proliferation of self-published books generated with Large Language Model AI has led to a lot of recycled material being presented as “new,” and written with non-human syntax that makes it more difficult to read.
• Many self-published books are intended to be shared only with family members and friends.
• Self-published books are not considered for review by major book reviewing sites, such as the NY Times Best Seller list.
• Some authors believe that well-written books will sell themselves. That is false.
• Brick-and-mortar bookstores generally do not carry self-published books.

I believe that soon, online retailers will clearly differentiate between traditionally published, self-published, and AI-written books. This is because when a book is traditionally published, prospective readers can be assured that the book has been vetted.

Without a clear differentiation, an online shopper may become dismayed by the poor quality of some of their purchased books, which may affect their trust in buying from that particular online retailer.

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I decided to pursue traditional publishing not only because I thought such books would carry more future prestige, but also because traditional publishers do not charge authors to publish their books, while self-publishing in print requires a financial investment:

• So-called “vanity publishers” offer to publish books for a few thousand dollars, but these publishers make their money from author purchases, rather than book sales. This means that they are not invested in promoting large book sales.
• “Hybrid publishers” act like traditional publishers, but the author is asked to pay thousands of dollars for each step of the publishing process, including developmental editing, copy editing, proofing, cover design, the interior book layout, etc.
• Self-publishing provides royalties that can be 5-10 times as high as those offered by traditional publishers. However, authors only come out ahead based on the increased royalty rate if they can sell many books. For instance, if an author pays a publisher $5000, and earns 50% royalty on sales of $20 books (instead of 6-8% royalty that might be offered by traditional publishers), they would have to sell 500 books to break even.

Early in the process of preparing my books, I already knew that, whether I chose the traditional or self-publishing route, I would have to carry most of the burden of marketing the book, as even traditional publishers have largely ceded that responsibility to authors.

The Necessity of a Literary Agent

Once I decided to pursue traditional publishing, I learned that if I wanted my book to be considered for publication by a major publisher, the book proposal needed to be submitted by a literary agent.

The major publishers want an agent involved because this ensures that the book is vetted by a professional whose goal is to find books that are likely to sell well.

To find an agent, I prepared a 50 page book proposal that included a summary of the book content, why the book was needed, why I was the author to write it, my curriculum vitae, the target readership, the book’s table of contents, a one page description of the content of each chapter, a sample chapter, and a marketing plan.

(Please note that the proposal format for a non-fiction book is quite different from that of a fiction book.)

I prepared a 6-paragraph query email and sent it to 90 literary agents whom I identified through perusing a Writer’s Market book. I personalized each email by explaining why I thought my book topic was a good fit for each of the agents’ listed interests in the Writer’s Market book.

To my dismay, only a third of the agents deigned to respond. I especially disliked that many of the agents stated in their instructions to authors that if they don’t respond within a few months, we should take it as a “No.”

Ultimately, three agents stated that they wanted to represent my book. All three responded to my query within two weeks after I emailed it. I sent them my full proposal, interviewed all of them, and picked the one who seemed most enthusiastic about spreading the word about my work.

Unfortunately, all the many publishers to which my agent initially submitted the book proposal turned it down, largely because their acquisitions editors felt parents would not want to read about hypnosis.

With that in mind, I started reconsidering self-publishing because I believed my book’s message to be important, and it seemed as if the book market was uninterested in taking a risk with publishing my book.

I think that the current-day major publishers are interested mostly in the bottom line and therefore choose to accept books that they believe are likely to sell well. Such books are typically formulaic, and, thus, unusual topics often are turned down.

We see the same trend in movies, wherein major studios prefer to remake movies that were classics, or present sequels to successful movies, rather than taking a chance on a new kind of movie.

Just as I was about to give up on traditional publishing, my agent reported that the last publisher to which she submitted my proposal was willing to offer me a contract.

I was delighted. However, the acquisitions editor at that publisher felt I should change the book title so that the potential reader would immediately understand what the book was about.

I agreed to reverse the title, and this is how my book came to be entitled Changing Children’s Lives with Hypnosis: A Journey to the Center.

Little did I realize the potential consequences of the change in title, which I will discuss in Part 2 of this blog series.