bad news on the battlefront

[waytanblee]

I've just been devouring a few Jim Butcher interviews and youtube Q&A's when I stumbled upon this little statistic which is, well... you'd better take a look...

Is it hard to get a book published?

It is almost heartbreakingly difficult to break into the industry. Something like one manuscript in every three hundred thousand submitted to publishing companies that actually sees print is written by a previously unpublished author. The rest are either the work of established authors, or are rejected entirely. Breaking in requires a great deal of research and hard work, stubbornness, and a certain measure of both arrogance and insanity.

Fortunately, my wife tells me I have all of those in abundance.

Here's the link for the whole interview:

http://www.wizardsharry.com/dresden5.html

[t_tibke]

From my experiences, those are ALL very true. Research (heck yeah), hard work (heck yeah), stubbornness (definately), and arrogance (yep, even that).

That being said, you are all capable of those things. What I can offer from my own experiences, is potential directions to point you for each of those things.

Research - Read up on the whole publishing market so you know what you're getting yourself into. 'The Idiot's Guide To Publishing' is a good start for that. Join a writer's forum and practice writing (yay, you did that!). Read up on writing for a living (Stephen King's "On Writing" is great for this) and subscribe to writing tips and things of that nature so you're forced daily to learn new things.

Hard Work - Keep writing. Keep reworking your work. Step away (for weeks, months), then come back and do it again. Keep doing the Research bit above in the meantime. Then when you're ready, start slamming the agent world with query letters. There are books and lists online that will compile names of these for you. Ultimately though, its best you know someone. So how do you get to know someone? (this is where some of the arrogance and more hard work come in) You go places where agents, authors, and publishers are. Conventions of all sorts exist; be it comic, gaming, writing, novelist, etc. And in this case, you have to meet them in person. Emailing and chatting and any of those online methods will not work. You need to be confident in yourself and speak confidently, but don't come off as arrogant or stupid (there's a fine line between these two at times).

Stubborness - People are going to tell you that you should probably try something else. They're going to try to get you to do other stuff (like watch movies, play video games, and other distracting habbits). You cannot give up at any time if you intend to see your novel through to its end. Even after you've gotten an agreement with a publisher, you're still going to need to continue to be stubborn, and keep aggressively marketing your stuff (more arrogance comes in here too).

Arrogance - We talked about this. This has a lot to do with not getting depressed about failing as much as anything. Keep picking yourself back up by telling yourself how awesome you are. Compare your writing to other pieces of writing and say "man, I can do that", or "man, my stuff's better than that dribble" and keep on going. It really doesn't matter if that's true or not, but you have to believe it is to keep going. And if you keep comparing yourself to other's writing, other people's published writing, you're going to begin to notice that if you keep revising your work, it will start to actually BE comprable to other published writing, and then (maybe) become BETTER than other published pieces of writing.

Overall, its a very long process that will make you wonder why you didn't go to school to be a writer right out of highschool (if you didn't) just because you wish you would've started sooner. If you DID go to school to be a writer right after highschool, it'll take a while before you stop feeling like you just wasted a good part of your life and money on school that didn't do you squat.

Well that's it from me for now. Had to get in some writing today, so I thought "what better way to do it?" Hope you've read something that sticks with you.

[Neurolanis]

Well, I guess I qualify then. I know I'm crazy enough.

[waytanblee]

My bet is that we, of SV, are quite a statistic ourselves--each being the one in a million who are actually serious enough to seek out a place like this and invest time in posting snippets and offering critisisms.

The odds appear to be stacked in our favour

[spknoevl]

I recall reading an interview with an editor somewhere who mentioned the fact the a great deal of the manuscripts that are submitted are actually very poorly written. They were saying that just the fact that a manuscript is half-decent usually will get them to read it. They were commenting about how sometimes it is easy for an editor to lose perspective when constantly reading submittals.

[Qray]

Hey! I'm not arrogant!

I'm egotistical!

[Talon Sinnah]

Aldan told me something a long time ago that would go with this.


Arrogance is bliss.-quote from Aldan- If I need arrogance to succeed then I have that in truck loads.

[Ariel]

I enjoy reading the works of new authors when I come across them. A lot of good advice given in this thread.

[berry]

I have come across a site called Authonomy, it is hosted by Harper and Collins and allows you to upload a novel, give it a blurb and a front cover. Harpers and Collins are going to use the site as a new way to look for promising authors. It's fairly new I think and I don't know if any authors have yet been chosen from using it but you may want to check it out as a safe, free and formal way to allow your work to be seen. Read is better than not read as Neil Gaiman says.

[Ariel]

Oooooh Neuro, check it out!

[Ariel]

Here's the link.
http://www.authonomy.com/

[Neurolanis]

That's pretty cool, but I want to get my book published in print by a major publishing house. I might use something like this as a last resort. I have no disrespect of course towards anyone who does that. Certainly knowing that people were reading your book would be great, and more and more authors are seeking self-publishing these days. If anything it should help rival the publishing companies into working with new and better authors.

Yeah, something like 98 per cent of all manuscripts are sent incorrectly. This means that they are sent snail mail (not as followed by a request after sending a proper query letter), the formatting is incorrect, spelling and grammar may be horrid, or they spell the agent's or editor's name wrong. That fact alone cuts it down to a workable margin for those of us with talent. As has already been mentioned, most of the manuscripts submitted are also poorly written. Lacking inside connections certainly will go against you, not being a freemason or belonging to some elitist club. But if you do have the professional dedication, the talent and the belief in yourself, I do believe that eventually you should be able to find an agent/publisher who is willing to work with you. Certainly this belief is a positive motivator anyway.