In Praise of the Educated Writer

While I've been in the publishing community many
years, I continue to learn new information all the time. I'm committed to a
life-time learning process. I've watched several of my writing friends who stop
learning and figure they have reached their level in the market. 



From my experience, this attitude of arrival is self-fulfilling for them as I also watch the stall of
their careers. Authors with this attitude only get to workshops when they are
teaching and don't read how-to magazines or books. I encourage you not to fall
into this attitude trap—no matter where you are on the spectrum of published
authors.



There are many ways for writers to get educated and
here's a few of them:



--conferences

--online groups

--writer's
groups

--critique
groups

--books

--magazines

--one on one mentoring or coaching

--blogs and other online articles

--online courses like my Write A Book Proposal
course



From my experience, I know a great deal of
publishing is about being in the right place, at the right time, with the right
material—timing is crucial. As someone who has reviewed thousands of manuscripts
and book proposals, I can read a few paragraphs and know whether the writer is
educated about the market and publishing.



The opposite is also true. I can tell whether the
writer has sprayed their proposal far and wide without any thought about what
our publishing house is producing. Recently an author mailed a self-published
book to the Morgan
James office in New York City. A little online research would tell you
quickly that I work remote and live in Colorado. Our office forwarded the book
to me and I opened it. First, I was amazed at the size (over 700 pages) then I
looked at the title and the contents (targeted to the New Age market). While
Morgan James publishes some Christian books (about 30 each year), they are not a
“Christian” publisher yet this view is across the board in the published books
(i.e. our fiction has no sex or curse words and the publisher would not publish
a New Age book). While I admire the enthusiasm of this writer, he had not taken
the few minutes to get educated and targeted with his submission. I read numerous books outside of what I do at Morgan James
and often write book reviews. Yet this book would not be one that I would
even read a few pages.



What steps are you taking to get educated as a
writer? 



Literary agents
and publishers receive thousands of submissions. The standout ones that get
published come from thoughtful, educated writers.



Tweetable:



Are your submissions targeted? How do you locate your right audience? Ideas are here.  (ClickToTweet)