Publishing: Where do I start?

Maybe you’re at a point in your writing where you have an actual manuscript sitting on your desk. Congratulations! Now, how do you take that looming stack of finely turned phrases and well-placed plot points and convert them into a bound book? Today, NaNoWriMo participant Kayla Stansbury delivers a step by step guide to support you on the journey to publication: 

You’ve written the thing.

You love it. You hate it. You’re ready to publish it.

The starting point for your publishing journey depends on your work and your goals for your writing. There are a few common steps regardless of whether you are publishing a children’s nonfiction book on plant emotions or a high fantasy epic poem.

1. The Market

First, you should determine the market for your work. Start with readership: children, middle grades, young adult, or adult. The age of your protagonist doesn’t necessarily dictate the readership age, but keep in mind that most publishers expect to see a young protagonist in children and middle grades fiction and a teenage protagonist in young adult fiction. Consider the content of your work. Are the themes of your novel, poem, or short story relevant to the concerns of your readership age? Once you have an audience, start researching the publishers who target that market.

Sign up for information through Publishers Weekly, or if you have the $25 a month to spare, create an account with Publishers Marketplace. Pro tip? Go to your bookshelf or your local bookstore and find novels, short stories, or poems that are similar to yours. Who is the publisher? As you track publishers, you’ll notice which ones might be a good fit for your story and the audience you want to reach.

Now that you have a readership age, comparative titles, and publishers in mind, it’s time to talk about representation.

2. The Agent

You do not always need a literary agent. Some editors will accept unsolicited work—novels that aren’t represented by an agency. On your preferred publishers’ website, there will be a “Contact Us” or “Submissions” page that explains whether or not they will accept unsolicited manuscripts. You may decide that going directly to an editor is a better fit for you, but most larger, well-known publishing companies will only work with literary agents.

A literary agent markets your book to editors and publishers, and represents you and your work to the industry.

You can find an agent through a writer’s conference or a workshop, or you can query them directly. It can be overwhelming to know where to start looking for an agent, but you should start your search with the books themselves.

In the back of every one of those books you used in your publisher search is a section titled, “Acknowledgments”. This is a gold mine for information about agents. The author will typically thank their agent and editors by name. Start collecting these names and you may notice a pattern! Authors whose work you admire or whose books are in the same readership and genre as yours may be working with the same agency. As you research the agents and agencies, keep track of what types of books they represent, and what is on their genre wishlist. Once you’ve found an agent you’re interested in, and who would be interested in you, it’s time to write the query letter.

3. The Query Letter

The query letter does three things: it introduces you to the agent you want to work with, it summarizes the story you wish to publish, and it explains why you and your writing would be a good fit for that particular agent. 

Depending on who you are querying, there may be other requirements for your submission. You should be prepared to provide a detailed summary and the first three chapters of your story, although some agencies may ask for more or less depending on their preference. For examples, see Jane Friedman’s excellent overview, “The Complete Guide to Query Letters.”

4. Some Final Thoughts

If you’ve been around the NaNoWriMo block, you know you must exercise that writing muscle. Friends, it is the same with publishing. You wouldn’t expect your first draft to be the best thing you’ve ever written, so why would you expect your first query letter to be perfect? Practice submitting to smaller magazines, local newspapers, or online journals. Pitch your story to friends and family members or that guy on the bus. Practice, practice, practice.

Kayla Stansbury is an educator and writer based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Raised in Porto Velho, Brazil, she is fluent in Portuguese and has a perfectly healthy obsession with the Amazon rainforest. She is a P.h.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at Louisiana State University, and spends her time studying the how-to manuals and science textbooks of ancient civilizations. Kayla is a first time Camp NaNoWriMo Winner as of April 2019, and she claims this is her greatest achievement to date. Her debut poem, “Saudade”, appeared in Issue #1 of Dovecote Magazine in May 2019.

Top photo by Adli Wahid on Unsplash.