I am, already in the process of writing my book on trading. The book will be an acount of my trading career, how I overcame barriers and my experience with the tremondous bull market and the aggrevating losses I suffer when the market turned bearish. How I finally found a system that works for me, which I will fully explained in detail. Also, I will talk alot about the difficulties that new traders will experience and hopefully guide them on the right path. But what I really wanted to ask you all is, how do I get my book published? If anyone has info on this, please let me know. Thanks
First work out if there is a demand for your book... "what can you offer readers that they don't already know?" should be the key question that you should contemplate... there are several such books out there, and most are pure drivel, a mere exercise in self-aggrandizement for the author and a waste of paper... a notable exception is The Stocktrader by Tony Oz, which is a fascinating read with plenty of valuable educational snippets... you may wish to approach Tony Oz and Alan Farley (both members of this forum) who are highly-regarded authors with a strong following... Tony has written a book similar to what you are thinking about... although Alan hasn't written that type of book, he may be able to shed further light on the practicalities of getting published.... Unless you can offer something that the target audience is likely to find of value, a top tier publisher is unlikely to want to take things further... If you are convinced of your idea, then the first step would be to directly engage with the 2 top tier publishers who specialise in the financial realm, namely Wiley and McGraw Hill... they will request, at the very minimum, a book outline, sample chapter and a strong case for how you feel that you will be able to differentiate yourself from the mass of aspiring authors... Should you fail in getting a top-tier publisher behind you, another route may be self-publishing...
there are several publishers out there called "vanity publishers".you pay them to publish your book and see if you can make a profit. trading books arent popular right now. i found several in the bargin book section at bookstore lately.
Zhuge, since it sounds your premier motive is to help out new/struggling traders, and not profit, may I suggest simply putting the book on the web. It costs virtually nothing to do so. And if it's really good stuff that helps, people will love you and you will be rewarded in ways you never thought of!
Great idea. Or why not post some of your ideas or chapters here on this site and get some feedback from us. Hopefully people will be constructive in their praise/criticism and you might get a better idea of whether or not the project is worth pursuing. Daniel
Bob and I went through the whole book thing, even had a few chapters written and a publisher who was willing to pay pretty good advances....but then we thought...hmmm....why the heck are we doing this now?? All this stuff is still working, and we don't want to trade in sound trading profits for a few bucks from a book....so we are keeping the book on a back burner until we feel that it makes sense as more of "reality" based history of how all this came about. Find a decent agent, test the basic premise, and you should be able to get a publisher.....or, as mentioned above, just publish it yourself as some of the other traders have done....better than the "vanity" press thing (which is silly, why give away any money, when it's cheap to print the editions yourself). Don
Traders read books on trading and the markets for one of two reasons (or both): 1) new information/new and useful perspective on old information 2) human interest (an entertaining/exciting/uplifting story). Do you have anything to say that hasn't already been said in the hundreds of books out there already? If not, have you accomplished something actually worth writing about, and even if so, do you have the talent to tell the story in an entertaining way? What's your motivation for writing the book in the first place? I assume it can't be money, because a successful trader worthy of book treatment certainly doesn't need a scrawny royalty check.
wiley is the biggest business publisher i know of, but i think they approach you. thats what i have been told by the authors. oz publishes his own stuff i think. if you are really serious about it TLO has a book out, i would contact her, through intelligent speculator. hers is formatted more like a manual than a book though. also, see who publishes ross's books. and try traders press good luck with it