How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical Guide. STEP 1: FIND A PUBLISHER
“Shouldn’t this be the last step of the Guide?” you might be asking. “The end of the book, as it were?”
No, dear readers, finding a publisher is just the beginning of your long saga. Little do you know that that is merely the first baby step in the 6,999 more before you actually hold your printed book in your hands. But don’t be overly concerned. You can do it. (Lest you’re feeling faint at this point, however, I will cheer you by telling you now that I plan to skip some of the more mundane steps so that you’ll be able to finish slogging through this Guide in your natural lifetime and still have enough weeks, maybe months, to actually put it to good use.)
There are several different types of publisher out there and ways to go about securing one. Much information already exists in blog or tweet form (that’s supposed to be a joke), so go read that first. Not to scare you, but if you’re hoping to be traditionally published, only five big houses exist – in the world – and they control nearly every known press and imprint. And they are only accepting a very small percentage of new writers. So, good luck with that.
The other choice is to self-publish, which requires a certain level of wherewithal, not to mention a bottomless vat of energy, neither of which I personally possess, but you might. Again, research and decide if this is for you.
The third way is to publish with a hybrid or indie-type of press, which has its own set of pro’s and con’s, including having to at least partially subsidize your book’s birth (the obvious con), but getting to claim full parental rights (the obvious pro).
This seems a good place to reveal that the hybrid method will be the model for the rest of the Guide, and here’s why:
I admit that I foolishly attempted to publish with the Big 5 with a different novel tucked under my arm – a large, unwieldy, brilliant type of saga that went on and on for 240,000 words, entitled Love’s Labor Found (no pun intended). After about a year of searching for an agent or a publisher for this big baby, I cleverly realized that this was going nowhere. (Quick aside: If your book is over 120,000 words, give up now. Don’t think you can change anybody’s mind by waving copies of the Goldfinch or Outlander in front of them. They could care less when you wave big books at them. My advice is to start over.)
I started over, determined to create something more publishable and, well, marketable. Thus, A Girl Like You – a shorter, more exciting mystery/romance set in the 1930’s – was born. And I decided to make it into a series, just for a bit of extra mileage. Soured now, however, on the Big 5, I turned instead to a hybrid press, self-publication being out of the question (see above).
Unlike my long, arduous journey towards the Big 5 with LLF, however, my path to a hybrid was really quite short and smooth and one which I can highly recommend. But was it the new and improved book or the publisher that made it so much easier? I suppose no one will ever know, but here I am, and I haven’t looked back once.
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STEP 1: FIND A PUBLISHER appeared first on Michelle Cox.
