How to Get Published

Introduction

Getting published is the dream of every unpublished writer. Despite their determination and ambition, however, most writers will remain unpublished because they pay attention only to the quality of the writing in the manuscript itself. That may seem a strange observation to make. Writing is all about words, after all. Words are carefully selected and polished by a writer in order to create a wonderful manuscript. From the author’s point of view that manuscript is all that’s needed to create a book. Authors think their manuscript is well written, therefore it ‘deserves’ to find its way into print, and it probably will do so the moment it falls into the hands of a publisher.

The concept that a good book will find a publisher is outdated and over-simplistic. Writing is just about words, but publishing is not. It’s like saying babies come from a man and a woman. Technically yes, they do, but the reality is that a baby comes from going to a bar, blurting out a nervous chat-up line followed by hours of flirtation, weeks of dating, dancing, expensive meals and optional marriage and a large bottle of wine. Publishing involves far more than just printing nice arrangements of words. The quality of an author’s writing is an important factor in a publisher’s decision to gamble a significant sum of money in signing up a book, but it isn’t the whole story.

It’s essential to put yourself in a publisher’s shoes for a moment and think about what else a publishing decision is based upon. What, apart from the quality of your writing, do you think would influence an editor to give you a contract? I have identified fifteen other crucial factors that a publisher takes into consideration, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Can’t think of any of them right now other than a fat cash bribe? Then you’ve picked the right book to help you make that leap from the world of unpaid writers to that exclusive group of people in possession of publishing contracts. I’ve commissioned five hundred books, rejected ten thousand submissions, and I’ve had a few books of my own published, so I know all the industry secrets. These secrets are factors that always form part of a publisher’s decision-making process, but which new authors never consider. Those secrets, plus other crucial tips and advice on getting published, will be revealed in this book. It’s worth noting that fiction and non fiction writing require slightly different skills and approaches when attempting to get published. Most tips in this book are applicable to both fiction and non fiction proposals, but some will be specific to one or the other.

Before I reveal the industry secrets I’ll explain the inner workings of the publishing business itself because understanding how publishers think and operate, what excites them, what reassures them and what scares them will give you a valuable advantage over other writers. You’ll be able to produce the right kind of book for the right publisher, you’ll present them with exactly the format they require, you’ll be realistic in your expectations of what they can do for you and you’ll be professional and confident in your contractual negotiations.

Publishers are business people. Their job is to make money from selling products, and that product happens to be books. If they don’t sell books at a profit then they can’t stay in business. They know that high quality writing isn’t necessarily going to make a profitable book, so when choosing which manuscripts to sign up for publication they think about many more elements than just the words on the page.

This makes the publishing decision-making process very difficult to predict from the outside. It’s a minefield of potential obstacles that can result in rejection at any moment. Fortunately it is possible for an author to adopt tactics around many of those obstacles, and the techniques for doing so will be explained later in the book. Sadly, some of the reasons for rejection encountered by writers are entirely beyond their control. The failure of a book proposal to navigate the treacherous waters between submission and acceptance is entirely normal. It only gets easier for established authors – the lucky ones who can reach the point when publishers phone them up to ask them to write a book. That’s when you know you’ve made it. But they all got their breaks somehow, and throughout this book I’ll explain the tactics writers can benefit from in order to create the right conditions for their own ‘lucky break’ to happen.