The Road To Publication

Over the past few months I’ve had some questions about how to write and a publish book. Please note that there is SO much information already available out there online – I knew nothing about the process when I started, knew no authors (yeah I interviewed our lord of Targaryens, George R R Martin but it’s not like I can call him), and everything I learned, I learned through our dear friend Google. It was so much trial and error and now that I’m a little further along in the process, I thought I would what I know so far.

But before that, some notes for the post –

• The path I outline below is for “traditional” publishing – aka from a publishing house, like HarperCollins, Random House, etc. There’s also self publishing, which tons of people do now and which doesn’t involve all the steps like an agent, etc. There are advantages and disadvantages to each side but that’s a whole other post.
• I assume below that you have a similar background to me (aka, no actual writing education/MFA, your publication experience largely limited to passive aggressive work emails).
• Again, I just have to repeat that there are so many different paths to publication. It’s kind of like asking the question “how do you become a musician?” Like, what kind of musician? A classical one? Someone who plays in the orchestra? Someone who plays at home? They’re all musicians, none of them are more valid than the other, and it’s all in your personal goals.

That said, here follows from my perspective, a very short, distilled version of the path to publication:

1. You write the book.

With very few exceptions (ie, you are a celebrity), most fiction manuscripts are only purchased by a publishing house when they’re complete. As in, finished. You can’t just send an outline and a copy of your SAT scores and tell them you’re good for it. They want to see the entire thing.

So if you want to be published, the first thing you have to do is finish your book. There are so many ways to do this that there really is no point in my detailing them all – what I will say is that for me, I sat down and forced myself to write 1,000 words a day, many of them absolute crud, in order to get to what was eventually a finished product. What’s called “butt in chair” hours. After I finished my first draft, I went back and edited. Repeat a zillion times.

Also, my two favorite books on writing – Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, and On Writing, by Stephen King. If you’re interested in writing, these in my opinion are the gold standard.

Note that what I say above is for fiction. For non-fiction, books are usually sold on proposal – so you don’t have to write the entire thing, but you should have a pretty darn good idea of what you are going to talk about!

2. You get an agent.

This was honestly one of the hardest parts of the publication process for me – the finding the agent part. I used to think that once you finished a manuscript, you just sent it into the publishing house, right? And then they were like, let’s award this genius tons of money! and poof, your life as an author was born.

No no. No no no.

First of all – most publishing houses don’t take what’s called “unsolicited manuscripts”. By unsolicited, they mean an enthusiastic email from your Gmail account extolling your future JK Rowling status. Instead, they usually only consider submissions from literary agents. Thus, literary agents have kind of become the new “gatekeepers”. Don’t get me wrong, publishers are gatekeepers too, but you likely won’t get to this gate unless you have an agent.

So, how do you get an agent?

Either you have super strong connections (I didn’t), or you have to go through this thing called querying. Well honestly, even if you have connections, you probably still have to query. You know how many “friends and relatives of X” agents would have to deal with, otherwise? Before you start writing a book, you think that you’re the only person in the world who has ever wanted to write; afterward, you realize that millions of people do.

Anyway, querying is where you write a short (one page or less) email about your book, basically trying to “hook” the agent into asking for the full manuscript. You might query something like 50 agents; maybe 10-20 might ask for the full, and then maybe 1-5 might offer representation. Note that this example is a very, very good one; sometimes no agents respond, and that’s just a fact of the industry. That’s often what happens. It’s not unusual to have to query hundreds of agents. Agents are inundated with queries (some get hundreds each day), and the ones who are actively looking for new talent might still only sign a few a year. Also, how much time do you think they have? This process can take months, and even years – an agent will say they are going to read, but they have like fifty manuscripts ahead of yours, and tons of other work to boot. So my best advice at this stage is – be persistence, have a thick skin to rejection, and be patient.

If you’ve written a manuscript, getting an agent is like passing the first circle of hell. But after you pass that…

3. You (and your agent) get a publisher. Your agent will take your manuscript and go submit it to publishers. They’ll have a list of editors at each of the publishers that they want to submit to. You should ask your agent for this list! Or at the very least, they should inform you of it when you ask them. Here lies the second circle of hell. Because just how agents are busy, so are editors. While agents are inundated by unagented authors, editors are inundated by agents. They also have existing clients. They also have tons of work. So you wait and you wait and finally, hopefully, an editor will like your manuscript enough to “acquire” it…that is, they say they’ll publish it…and then…

4. You go through edits. I’m just finishing this stage. Before writing a book, I had absolutely no idea how much editing a book goes through. You ever wonder how 400+ page books get published with no typos? It’s because a lot of people at the publishing house read it, a lot of times. You go through rounds and rounds, both for content and for copy. It’s both exciting and stressful because you have tight deadlines (I basically pulled all nighters for a week, which luckily I was used to due to baby. Ugh).

5. Your book is released.  I have yet to go through this. I’ll update when I do. Wish me luck! And please, forgive me for inserting the obligatory pre-order link, here.

After I shared the news of my own book, I was really surprised and happy to receive so many messages from other readers with dreams of being writing and being published. Honestly, I encourage anyone who wants to write to at least try it! It’s a wonderful (and often maddening) feeling to write but it’s also one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I believe in you! And of course, I wish all of you luck on your own paths – if you have questions, please feel free to comment (I do get a lot of the same questions, so that way all the info can be in the thread!).