The Path to Publication

Eileen asked (in response to my pleading for topics to blog about) how I got my book published. The answer is probably similar in many ways to most folks, though I had a few things that are different. Step one, of course, is to finish the book. When you’re writing fiction, you’ve got to have a completed manuscript before you do anything else. And it’s not just a first draft, either. You want to take the time to review and revise it and probably work with someone (critique partner or pay for a critique if you don’t have someone from a writer’s group who you can partner with) to try and get as many kinks out of it as possible. To be honest, I didn’t do as much of that as I should have before I moved on to the next step (and it still makes me die a little inside when I think of what I sent off to several agents in queries, especially when compared with what I have as a final product now. Ah well.)

The next step, if you’re thinking you want one of the larger traditional publishers, is to find an agent. I recommend checking The Christian Writer’s Market Guide out of your library (I’m pretty confident that if my library had a copy, yours will too. If they don’t, you can buy it, but they put out a new edition every year, so keep in mind that it’s going to be out of date just about the minute you buy it. If not before.) Then you research agents who rep what you’ve written (pay attention to the genres they sell!) and you go to their websites to look up their query guidelines and you query. I did this for about six months, until I’d exhausted the pool of agents I had decided were possibilities for my novel. And I never heard a single word back from any of them. Honestly, it got to the point that I would have loved a rejection letter (even a form letter) just simply to prove that my query reached them. (As a computer nerd, I know setting up a bulk mail like that isn’t really that hard, but whatever. Note for want-to-be-published authors: you may never hear a word back from people. To me, that was more disheartening than anything.)

At this point, I only put querying agents on hold because I was going to the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writer’s Conference. (There are several posts in the archives about that experience.) So I took my considerably more polished query with me and headed there. And based on some feedback I got from a paid critique, I realized that my novel was probably not going to sell to a major publisher – and that most certainly factored into why I wasn’t getting any nibbles from an agent. Because agents only take on projects they can sell. So even if your writing is so fabulous you could be the next F. Scott Fitzgerald (or whomever), if what you’ve written isn’t going to sell? They’re not likely to take a chance on you. (Note: I’m not saying I’m the next Fitzgerald.) This pushed me into looking at smaller presses.

At the conference, I talked with the owner of the small press I ended up going with. She had been previously publishing solely non-fiction but was looking at starting a fiction imprint. We talked. She read my manuscript. Things clicked.

At the end of the day, I think it’s probably a little easier to get published with a smaller, independent press. First, you don’t need an agent. Many (probably most) of the smaller presses are happy to work directly with an author. Now, if you aren’t comfortable reading a contract and that type of thing, then maybe once you have a sale on the table with a small press you’d be able to find an agent to help. Not sure on that score – I’m going agent-less right now and for now it’s working for me. But smaller presses are able to take risks on subject matter and content that the big publisher aren’t going to touch unless you’re a big name author already (and therefore people will buy your book on the basis of your name alone).

But I like the fact that I have a bonafide publisher. I suspect if I hadn’t found a small press to work with that I might have eventually considered self-publishing. But I’m glad it didn’t come down to that at this point. With a publisher, I have help with editing and marketing (maybe a little less on the marketing than with a big publisher, but honestly, as a debut author, it’s probably not all that much less. I don’t have a name that’s going to be recognized by anyone at this point, so from a bottom-line stand point, money spent on me would be a big risk to a major publisher. I don’t really think the difference is all that huge.) I also have the benefit of my book being sent off to various places to possibly be reviewed (Publisher’s Weekly, etc.) I think you can submit a self-pubbed book to some of those resources, but I’m not sure how many self-pubs they look at…plus that’s one more thing I don’t have to do as an author (which frees me up to, you know, write.) Now, obviously, they don’t guarantee that they’ll review every book that gets submitted. But it’s there and I’ve got my fingers crossed.

That’s the long answer to “how did you get your book published?” The short answer is probably “Effort and prayer.”