How To Get Book Published
How to Get Book Published: Do Matching Services Work?
Author: Dee Power
How to get a book published can be a daunting task for any writer. Should you use an Online Matching Services or Email Blast Programs? Are these services worth the money or just a waste of time?
These services, for a fee, put your query letter, synopsis and first chapter online. The fees vary from service to service. Acquisition editors and literary agents then have the opportunity to peruse the offerings. You have to ask yourself if you truly believe that the average literary agent, who receives 1100 unsolicited queries a year, has the time to look at these websites. Don’t be surprised if you’re contacted by an editor that works at a vanity/subsidy publisher. Or an agent who charges upfront fees to read your manuscript. Always keep in mind that in the publishing industry, money should flow towards the author.
The reverse, or maybe it’s the inverse, are services that have databases of agents and publishers. You specify the genre of your book and up pops agents/publishers who have said they are interested in your genre. Sometimes the agents/publishers have provided their acquisition specs and sometimes the owner of the database has just input the information from other sources. These databases are usually monthly or yearly memberships. There is little or no screening of the validity of the agent or publisher.
Finally there are services who will email blast your query letter to agents/publishers. If the participants have agreed to receive the query letters there is a higher probability you will be successful. But, again you have to wonder, with all the unpublished manuscripts out there looking for a publishing home, why would an agent/publisher feel it necessary to sign up for these types of services. Agents who require an upfront fee (remember, never pay an agent upfront) are members of these services. Before you get all excited do a brief search on the agent before you send them your manuscript or book proposal. You can put their name +scam in a search agent to find out what other author’s experiences have been.
Every author asks the question “How to get a book published?” If you’re considering using one of these services ask for references. You can also ask about the success rate of the program. Don’t be surprised if the answer is something like “We don’t know the success rate because the authors aren’t obligated to tell us.” Or “the success rate is based on the quality of the manuscript and we don’t control that aspect.”
You can get your book published if you are careful and don’t give up.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/how-to-get-book-published-do-matching-services-work-174921.html
About the Author
Avoid scams get our complimentary report Perils and Pitfalls of Publishing for Writers just visit Free Report
Dee Power is the author of several books including The Publishing Primer: A Blueprint for an Author’s Success and the novel, Over Time
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To be brief: it’s quite hard to get published. A complete battlefield.
If it were easy – half the people on Yahoo! Answers would be published authors, seeing that people are always asking about publishing.
However, what separates published from unpublished authors is the amount of determination. If Stephen King was not determined – he would have given up like a lot of people do after rejection letter number 50.
Again, to be brief, pick up Writer’s Market 2008. It’s a writer’s Bible.
I would not discourage you – just wish you a lot of luck.
Janie, first you finish the book. You put it away for a few months, then reread it and make any changes or fixes it needs when you view it with “new eyes.”
Next you give it to trusted beta readers–people who are not your friends or family and therefore prefer not to hurt your feelings–for their input. What worked for them? What didn’t? What mistakes did they find? Where were they confused? Bored? Do a rewrite based on their feedback.
Only then is it time to identify publishers who deal directly with authors (none of the big-name ones do) and literary agents who have sold books similar to yours. The current Writer’s Market or Literary Marketplace will help you, and you can do further research on agents online.
But first, finish the book and take the time to rewrite it as many times as you need to to make it as good as it can be.
First, don’t self publish. You may be “published,” but you have to do all the work in respect to getting the book out there: marketing, selling it, etc.
Second, do not submit directly with the publishing house, unless that publishing house is a small one. Your submission will be what we fondly call “slush.” Large publishing houses—such as Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins—do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. If you would like to publish with a larger house, you need to find a literary agent, who has connections to editors that you do not. Smaller houses, with shorter pub lists, may be open to direct submissions from authors.
To find a literary agent, you need to either check LMP (Literary Market Place) or Writer’s Market; both publications should be available at your bookstore and/or library. Agents will charge a fee, yes, but they are the ones from whom larger houses will accept submissions.
The editorial process—the editing, the revisions, etc.—that is mentioned above will NOT occur in the submissions stage. Editors don’t have time for that. If they are interested in your first draft, they can see beyond the fixes and will acquire the manuscript. You need to be mindful that once you decide to pursue the submissions process and hire an agent, you need to review their guidelines carefully.
From the time you hire an agent till acquisitions can be a long, long process. It can and has taken years for authors to be published. It takes almost a year to produce a book, from manuscript stage till bound book stage. The book, prior to production, is in house for several months after acquisitions, so don’t expect your work to be published for several years after it is bought. I’m working on books that were acquired back in the nineties, so you can imagine what the pub schedule is like.
Be patient, believe in your work, and with luck (and with hope that you are a good writer), an editor will like your work. Just don’t expect it to happen straightaway.
And just a piece of advice on the sequel. Albeit admirable that you’ve started working on a sequel, I’d hold off on completing it or even working on it further. You don’t know what the final product of the first book will be like, and it may be that the publishing house will not see the first book as something that should be MADE into a series. Book series just don’t happen. They’re not necessarily predetermined with the first book (usually by the second book, yes). Don’t waste your time writing that sequel just yet.
Congratulations for writing a book. That is a major achievement.
Unfortunately, your parents and best friend are telling you what they think of YOU, not your book. You need an independent assessment of an editor. You will NOT be published without the assistance of an editor, unless you pay a vanity (self) publisher. In that case you will pay thousands of dollars. Try lulu.com. Real publishers do not charge for publishing because they sell your book and keep a proportion of the money. If anyone charges you for publishing, they are not real publishers.
Good luck
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