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How does one go about getting published?
billwill
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Pretty simple question.
I have a book that I have written, plus a few persuasive articles. How do I go about getting them published? I mean, I doubt they would be published, but I am just curious as to how the process goes.
I have a book that I have written, plus a few persuasive articles. How do I go about getting them published? I mean, I doubt they would be published, but I am just curious as to how the process goes.
I hate you and you hate me.
billwill on
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if it's good enough, it'll get published, even if it takes slow years of waiting on replies to submissions. if it's not, it won't. the hard work in getting a book published is simply making it good enough
* - publishers will usually have their own submission guidelines and some may not accept unsolicited manuscripts at all. you can find this kind of information on their websites usually, so check that out. but really, just send it. if it takes two weeks to find out you send it to the wrong place in the wrong way it's no greater waste of your time than having it sitting in your top drawer
how about a piece for something like the new york times (or something much smaller, like a local paper)
edit: i know more about book publishing than the newspaper industry though so there may be other ways. why not ring up your local paper?
All the info you could want.
For books send it into the slush pile at literary agencies, for shorter pieces send them everywhere.
buy warhams
You go to conventions, you see a whole lot of "authors" who self-published and are now selling copies of the previously mentioned masterpiece out of the trunk of their car.
bsjezz knows what's up. Other than that, be prepared for a lot of waiting. Send your manuscript to anyone you think may be interested, and hey, while you're waiting, start writing a second book, and some more articles. Send those out. And hey, while you're waiting... etc. Do this until you get published, give up, or die.
Good luck.
Certainly getting in touch with former instructors who publish or perish can give you some good direction. generally, many successful non-fiction "writers" get their start like anyone else: by knowing the right people, or at least, knowing the right market.
Everything else is pretty spot on, send send send and then wait wait wait (maybe a little crying allowed).
Don't you mean get an agent? I know there are all sorts of scammy "editors" out there.
You can ask them if they're part of any networks or associations and check the credentials of that. The only network I know of is this one.
It might not be the standard, but my mom (freelance editor and part of that network) does query letters and proposals all the time. I assumed that was normal.
My boss publishes his stuff through iUniverse, but I don't know how they compare to other self-publishers or conventional publishers in regards to costs and royalties and all that stuff (I only deal with the manuscripts), but they're not a scam at least, since he's published at least half a dozen books with them which have all gone on to be sold on Amazon and in bookstores.
It's worth doing a little Googling about this sort of thing, certainly.
If you want anyone apart from friends, family to read it, try getting it "really" published first. Only if this fails go onto vanity publishers. Don't give up before you've even tried.
If this was bad advice I'm sorry, but since my entire interaction with the company is me correcting formatting in .doc files, selecting covers and printing stuff, I have no idea what these places are like beyond what my boss tells me.
They are not "bad" so much as dead ends. If you want to be a well-known author, you need real publishers. If you want to publish a short history of your home town and sell it in the local bookstore, vanity publishers are fine.
Vanity publishers simply create the physical book. Real publishers will edit, market and arrange distribution, too.
If you want to be a "well-known" author, most of the time that translates to attending the correct writing programs, specialty programs, education etc. which all culminates in older, more established persons pulling strings to get manuscripts looked at.
That said, it depends on exactly what is being shopped around. Academic publications are different from science fiction, fantasy is different from young adult fiction, children's books are different from espionage. Some are easier to "break-into" from the floor up than others, and most of them have their own unspoken rules and procedures.
The less "academic" the work, the "easier" it is to break through, though the trade-off is generally a larger volume of competition, naturally.
Look at pulpy sci-fi/fantasy, for example. Throughout the 80's and 90's most branded work was done by a rather small but close-knit group of authors. Star Wars and AD&D novels (for two) are a great examples.
It comes to a question of audience. If there's an audience, self-publishing is worthwhile. I work with a large group of poets out of NYC and, as such, "self-publishing" helps them out substantially because there's a market existent and dissemination of professional chapbooks helps them to achieve even greater renown. A dude hermetically writing in the basement without an established and enthused audience? not so much.