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So you find yourself with a manuscript that needs printing and no publisher to print it. What do you do? Well if you are like me you begin a never ending trek through the internet for every scrap of information you can possibly find. This includes entering in millions of searches and polling friends on forums and doing almost anything else you can shy of actually going to a library or calling a publisher and talking to real people.
Of course that typically starts with our good friend Google and his never ending list-o-publishers gathered from a search like “novel publishers” or “first time publishing”. With a little research into these sites you quickly realize that most of them are not publishers, per say, but more so print houses. After hours spent researching you come up with a fat stack of nothing.
Quickly you become discouraged (I know I did). So you shelf your manuscript and pout for a couple days. Maybe play some online games, maybe just veg in front of the TV. At some point in the next month or so you spill some cookies on the floor next to your coffee table and in cleaning them up you discover your long forgotten (ok not really) manuscript. And the search resumes again.
But this time you are smarter. You hunt actual publishers, starting with the big names and working your way down. You probably start with the publishers of books in your personal collection that share a genre, form, or topic with your book. Maybe you even call one or two of the numbers of these big publishers only to receive a quick “get an agent or get out” speech.
Believe me, it isn’t that these publisher’s secretaries are all mean spirited people. They act that way because of the constant flood of calls they get every day. Think about how you would react to people calling you all day long saying “I have the greatest book ever. You would be a fool not to publish this book”. Chances are you wouldn’t even make it past “I have”, and the phone would out of your hand. So consider the amount of kindness it takes to actually tell you why these publishers won’t take your work instead of just dismissing you entirely.
That said you still don’t lose hope. Now you begin to shoot through the internet hunting the little publishers. Of course this is when you learn that even most of them require agents or are not taking submissions or are tailored to a market you aren’t in. Here is where hope crashes. Now your manuscript is shelved and you move on with your life.
YEAH RIGHT!!!!
This much time into it you know just as well as I that there is no way you are giving up. Somewhere out there you have to find someone who will publish your work. You dedicate many nights to the pursuit of this endeavor. Your personal life suffers. Your work life suffers (you aren’t published so we know you still work). And still you have nothing to show for it but a list of possible suspects and some papers full of scratched out numbers.
That is where I am trying to come in. Wouldn’t you know it, I spent nights upon nights researching publishing my book and wouldn’t you know it, so have many others.
In the deep recesses of the internet there lie articles upon articles written about publishing in the modern world. Some of them contain lists of publishers known to take first time manuscripts (see “Editors of First Novels: Revised” below). Some of them contain inspirational stories of success or dismal stories of failure. And still some more contain an abundance of useful, if not disheartening, information.
This is the point where you realize that you have made some incredible errors like:
1) Having a finished manuscript 2) Not having an agent 3) Not knowing what a Query Letter or Cover Letter or Proposal Letter are 4) Having a broad topic book that isn’t easily categorized 5) Having a book on a topic in a flooded market area 6) Not having any idea what to do about advertising (Publishers like to know what you are willing to do or have done to sell your book) 7) Not having a history (published, family, or otherwise) . . . . . .
Believe me this list goes on and on and on and on and on. But what you find out as you keep digging is that many of the mistakes mentioned above can be circumvented. Some publishers will enjoy a finished book (especially a well edited one). Not everyone needs an agent (even for giant publishers there is ways around this). And letter formats are easily researched.
So now you have some idea what to do right? Well probably not, but I bet you have a better idea how little you know. So here are a couple suggestions from my personal experience and a small list of websites that might help you out.
For starters here are my words of advice:
Don’t give up. Even if you have limited money and no real typing ability there is a way to get published out there. It may not be the way you want but it is there.
If you love it, Pimp it. There are many internet communities out there like MySpace, Facebook, Gaia, and countless others that make beautiful pimping mediums for your works.
Remember to be sincere about what you pimp. Plastering your book all over the internet means nothing if you aren’t willing to look at other peoples work and help them out as well. Making friends starts with being friendly.
Research, research, and research some more. If you think you have a pretty good grip on something pull back and check again. I bet you missed something useful.
Don’t be afraid to call and talk to actual people. While publishers are turned off to questions regarding manuscript submission, they are often open to questions regarding the market and points of interest. Remember, they are people too and if you treat them well and sincerely ask their opinion and compliment them on their knowledge and thank them for anything they do, they might even help you.
Lastly, don’t give up. I know I said this already, but it needs repeating. When writing your book, you will always be your own worst critic. Similarly, when trying to publish it you will be your own worst hindrance. It is hard; if it was easy everyone would do it (well more everyone than now).
So, good luck to all the other aspiring authors out there.
The rest of this will be links to useful information or just piles of information. Note I do not own any of the information or sites listed below. I claim no responsibility for what they say or do. Yada, yada, yada, tiny type, butt covering, etc, etc, etc . . . .
Please enjoy and if you found this useful, leave a comment about it. Even more so, if you found any of the other links useful, please let them know. Everyone likes to know they have done something good. And you never know, you may have made a good friend and irreplaceable ally.
Links of interest:
This site is dedicated to helping you sort it all out. There is a massive amount of useful data here and odds are you wont find out about this unless you have found a link on a page like mine or even in the submitting manuscripts section of a publisher (like I did). The second link is an article about the raw truth of publishing. It is incredibly useful. http://www.publishingbasics.com/ http://www.publishingbasics.com/2007/08/22/publishing%e2%80%94the-raw-truth/
This site is similar to the above, but tailors more to networking publishers, writers, artists, and even some distributors together in one big social network. This is a great place to research and make friends and contacts. http://www.spawn.org/
This article contains a list of Editors that have published first novels in the past. I have a revised list of these editors that tailors to the literary fiction novel that is being presented without an agent, as well as their contact information and manuscript submission criteria. I don’t claim to be fully up to date nor does the owner of the original article. http://www.bookmarket.com/newnovels.htm
The writer’s network of choice Writers Digest. I am sure you have seen this in your research. It costs money, but it can help most people out. Plus there is a 30 day free trial. http://www.writersdigest.com/
The Revised Publisher list will be posted asap.
Chetri · Fri Nov 14, 2008 @ 08:27am · 0 Comments |
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