Kotabi and Raymond Hoser has neither the funds, time or resources to do this.

Within these constraints, Raymond Hoser has a permanent request out for information about corruption - those who may be able to assist are asked to click onto the following webpage address first:-
http://www.smuggled.com/HosInf1.htm

Assuming you have a manuscript that you feel has "best-seller" potential, or "must be published" we suggest that you publish it yourself.

In this day and age it has never been easier to publish your own book.

As of year 2000, the cost is usually in the vicinity of about $20,000 for a standard 100,000 word book to print 3,000-6,000 copies of an average quality (B/W) book.

Assuming you are sure your book will sell at least 1,000 copies with minimal effort, then you should seriously consider doing the project yourself. Kotabi can offer NO assistance – so please don't ask for any.

If you are insistent on having a publisher (other than yourself) publish your work, we suggest that you obtain a copy of a listing of book publishers from somewhere such as the Australian Bookseller and Publisher office in Sydney. We do not have their address details here. We then advise you to target only those publishers likely to print your kind of work – in other words don't bother approaching a natural history publisher with a kid's book.

There used to be a stigma in doing this. There no longer is. Raymond Hoser had his first three books published with a mainstream publisher. All sold out. He now publishes his books through Kotabi Publishing (a company he has a stake in) and thus keeps more of the profits.

We assume that your manuscript is on computer disk or similar. If it isn't, then you must put it onto a disk as a word-processed manuscript before you or anyone else can do anything with it as far as publication is concerned. No one will look at a hand-written manuscript.

In line with the above we cannot be of assistance to people wanting books published at the present time.

We do however offer the following general advice.

As far as publication goes once one has a word-processed manuscript there are certain steps.

These are roughly as follows:-

• this can be done by a professional. They usually charge about $5,000 per manuscript as a ballpark figure, but this also varies considerably depending on the amount of work needed and what exactly the editor does. There are some who offer "editing" services which include things like design, pre-publication and so on.

• this can be done by a professional or yourself using a computer program like Adobe Pagemaker, Quark Express or similar. Professionals also use these programs. The professionals usually charge about $5,000 per manuscript as a ballpark figure, but this also varies considerably depending on the amount of work needed, including things like photos, images, etc, and what exactly the designer does. There are some who offer "editing" services also and help organize things such as printing with printers.

• Printers are dime a dozen. Those who specialise in books are rarer, but for book publishing we usually recommend these people. If publishing a book yourself, we suggest that you get at least five quotes including from major companies that specialize in printing books. Make sure that all quote to exactly the same specifications and also make sure you know exactly what you are quoting on in terms of quality of paper and so on. Unfortunately until you get your finished product from the printer, you will not know if you have made the right decision. Cost of printing an average 3,000 print run of 300 page books is usually about $15,000, depending on number of factors such as page size, paper type, etc.

• This is the hard part. It is also the most important. How good a book is has little to do with how many get sold. Things like promotion, distribution, and publicity are what count in the end. Some of the world's worst books become best-sellers due to the saturation publicity they receive. The opposite occurs due to a lack of publicity and/or distribution for good books. In fact there is strong pressure against sales of good books published by individuals, small companies and those that deal with sensitive matters like corruption. In the first two instances, if a particularly good book is written by an individual not connected with a major publishing house that could conceivably be a best-seller it is likely a major publisher will quickly publish an emulation of the original and flood the market with it, capturing sales through use of saturation media or similar. The original author cannot compete. In terms of corruption books such as what Kotabi has concentrated on, there are added problems as outlined on the smuggled.com websites. These include defamation writs, raids, criminal charges for authors, and a media black-ban. These are to suppress general knowledge of the corruption within the books by those adversely named. What happens to Kotabi and Raymond Hoser are far from unique. In fact they are common practice in Australia and elsewhere. You will not sell heaps of books through the internet or other alternative means unless you own a major metropolitan newspaper that will promote your site in its pages. This is unlikely for anyone else.