Publishing Basics, Part II

Publishing Basics, Part II

Last time I covered some terms, but after a few I realized that when you’re using new words to define other new words, you’re asking for trouble. So I’ll go through the process instead, explaining as I go.

Standard disclaimer: It’s all different for all of us. I’ll try to keep it general, but when it comes to actually writing the books, my own experience is all I’ve got.

Right. So now that’s out of the way…

So you wrote a book. Congratulations. Well done! You’ve done far more than most people manage. But now what do you do with it?

You put it away. Admire it for a bit, and put it away. Write another one. While you’re writing the next one, start researching publishing. Start with me if you like, but then move on to the pros. (Such as the previously mentioned Miss Snark, Colleen Lindsay, Nathan Bransford.) Learn a bit about this business you’re hoping to dive into.

Most writers, I think, don’t start another book right away. They may follow the (excellent and widespread) advice to put the first away for a while, but then they pull it out and start editing it. This makes no sense to me. I don’t think writing one book makes a writer ready for editing. Of course, I took it to the other extreme and wrote four novels before I succeeded in a major edit, but I’m not saying you have to do that.

I’m sorry, but the fact is your first novel (like all first drafts, especially of first novels) sucks. And the first-time writer of a first draft is too new to know how very much that manuscript sucks. Please, please, don’t show it to anyone who doesn’t love you very, very much, and already know that you are brilliant. An unshakable faith in your awesomeness would also be a good thing.

So I say set it aside. Write another book. I betcha, I just bet you, as you’re fighting that second book, you get a glimpse of something you got wrong in the first one. I bet you even figure out a way to fix it. Congratulations, my friend. Now you’re getting somewhere.

Okay, so let’s say you’ve followed my advice. Now you have two books. One of them you’ve edited till the pages bled red ink, and you think it’s ready.

Did you get it critiqued? Find a writer’s group, online or not, and exchange mss. Critique and be critiqued. This hurts like hell, but it’s incredibly valuable. Your book needs to be read by someone who can’t see what’s inside your head, so you can figure out how much of what’s in your head didn’t make it onto the page. You’ve been looking at your words so long you’re blind to them. Let someone else look.

I know, I know, I keep telling you you’re not ready. But this time you’ve edited, you’ve responded to critiques, you’ve polished your prose to a deadly shine, and you’re ready.

This is where your publishing research comes in. Are you submitting to agents, or directly to publishers?

Don’t know? Ahh, should have been reading up.

Most publishers will not accept unsolicited submissions. What does that mean? That means you ship them your brilliant work of genius and sweated blood, and they toss it in the recycling bin unopened. If you don’t have an agent, you cannot place a book with them. Period. (SF&F publishers, for the most part, do accept “over the transom” submissions–stuff they didn’t ask for. But then you’re buried in the slush pile, and that’s just as bad as it sounds. Sometimes writers are found in the slush pile, but not very darned often.)

I’m firmly of the opinion that writers need agents. Yes, they take 15% or so of your income, but a good agent is going to improve your income at least that much, just by saving your ignorant butt from signing stuff you shouldn’t. Also a good agent fights your battles for you, so you can have be friendly with your editor and not get a reputation as being hard to work with. This is a marvelous thing.

How do you find a good agent? Man, I could write reams about that, but I won’t, because Miss Snark already did. I’ll pass on a few of her pointers, though, in case you don’t have time to spend a week in the Snarkives right now.

Remember that money flows towards the writer. If they want money, run for it.

Agentquery.com is a searchable database, which makes it an excellent starting point. It is not all-knowing. My standard method was to start there, and then go to Publishers Marketplace to research sales (Miss Snark said never to query an agent if you didn’t know about their sales), and from there to the agent’s website. AbsoluteWrite is also an excellent resource: their Water Cooler section has a thread on most working agents that will tell you how other writers have fared with the agent in question.

This should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway–if Agentquery.com says “accepting queries” and the agent’s site on Publisher’s Marketplace says, “accepting queries,” and the agent’s website says, “closed to queries,” she is closed to queries. The agent has no control over the other two. She can only update her own site.

Oh, and on a sidenote: yes, there are men in publishing, but lots of the pros are women, so addressing anything to an unknown with “Dear Sir” is a bad plan. They laugh at that. On Twitter. They won’t say your name, but you still don’t want to be laughed at on Twitter for not knowing that much of the publishing world is female. A much better plan is just to find out a name. “Dear [Ambiguous Name]” will go over far better than getting the gender wrong.

Don’t query them if they’re closed to queries, either. At best you’ll be deleted unread. Or you might get laughed at on Twitter again.

This is long again, so I’m going to let you go with homework. Next time we’ll cover queries, so your assignment tonight is to find some people to query. Yes, you can send simultaneous submissions to agents. (That means querying several agents at once though not in the same email.) (No, you can’t do that with publishers–it’s one at a time with them.) So get your list ready, and put your dream agent right on top!

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