ForumsFinancing Tips

Dorian, it's not impossible that you'd find third-party funding for this, but it's unlikely.

You describe your firm as "an independent publisher of multicultural books representing a full spectrum of genres" -- in other words, every kind of publication for every kind of reader. Huge publishing houses already have that role. The most successful independent niche publishers begin by targeting a specific audience and publishing a specific type of product in a specific genre to suit that audience. You may expand later, but my thought is that you need a distinctive and clearly-defined starting point.

So what authors do you currently represent and/or what intellectual properties do you own the rights to? Visiting your website store, I see you have a nice selection of tee-shirts for sale, but I don't see a single publication of any kind. To attract an investor's interest and funding, you'll probably need more than a logo -- you'll need an author and message that other publishers are ignoring, and that someone (who has money to invest) will agree needs to be heard.

I would suggest building your business plan around an initial project like that (launching one author and/or publication). With today's tools and technologies, you can do that for a lot less than $50K, use that project to gradually build a customer base, and then use that established customer base to attract more authors -- and take on more projects. As a small start-up publisher, you WANT to expand gradually -- and your business plan and the contracts you have in place (with printers, distributors, authors, etc.) should reflect that.

The key to your business is what your website calls the "Marketing Department." Who are those people and what kinds of industry experience and contacts do they have. To attract investors and legitimate authors, you may want to name names here and put their bios on the website and in certainly in the business plan. You're asking both investors and authors to bet on your Marketing Department being very, very good at what it does - so you might want to provide some evidence of that up front.

As I was writing this, I had a feeling of deja vu -- and sure enough, I said a lot of this in my response to a post that you made last December -- you didn't mark that it was helpful then, so this may not be either (but since I've already written it, seems like a waste to delete and cancel . . .).

Anyway, good luck with your business and best wishes.

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