What is a good publishing company in or around Florida?

Is having my own publishing company worth it?

• I am a medical doctor who has successfully self published two books completely by myself (without a self publishing company) in effect producing my own publishing company. I am considering looking for authors to publish, but not sure if I would be completely overwhelmed by every Tom, Dick & Harry who has ever written anything. My areas of expertise would be medicine and being a father of 3, pre-school and primary school age childrens writing, but I would also consider publishing non-fiction works of people that live/cope with chronic illness that have a good story to tell. Do people think that it would be worth the effort?

• Answer:

  Running a publishing company is a business and you would need to evaluate it as you would any other business you might want to start. Right now, the areas of expertise you list have nothing to do with writing or publishing, so those are areas you would need to look into. If you start a publishing company you will... Need to evaluate potentially hundreds of submissions a week to decide which meet the needs of your company. Send hundreds of rejection letters to those you don't accept. Provide editing for all the manuscripts you accept. Which means constant communication with all authors going through the editing process. Provide cover art and any other artwork for authors under contract. Cultivate contacts in the industry to send of books for review. Also, to market the books you produce. Work with multiple distribution sites to make sure your books are available for order or download. Keep in mind, these all take a percentage of the profits. Handle the daily drama of working with authors. Handle returns, complaints, legal issues, etc. Now, if after all that, you still think you have it in you to be a publisher, you might want to check for any big publishing or writing conventions in your are. Small presses often show up at those, so you could find someone who is already in the business to talk to about what to do and what to expect. You want to have as much knowledge as possible before risking any funds.