How to Get Your Book Published the Traditional Route

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02/01/2012 06:31 AM

Before a person tries to get published, it is extremely common for their minds to start filling with questions they cannot seem to answer for themselves.  One of the first questions a person seems to pine over is whether they should hire an agent, or go after that publishing contract solo. Despite what your particular question, or questions, might be I will address them here.

In this post, I will tell you what you need to do to get published the traditional route. 

GET YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED

WHAT ARE THE FIRST 5 STEPS TO GET PUBLISHED? 

1)     READ

Before you can begin to be a good writer you must be a great reader. 

If you are asking yourself what kind of books you should read, the answer is always the same answer you would get from asking yourself, what type of books are relevant to your writing interests.  Those books will provide you with a good starting point anyhow.  You really want to branch out as far as you can go, the more you read the more you have. 

Bottom line is, read often, and reread what you have already read.  Rereading is often a great way to help readers understand concepts more concretely.

2)     ANALYZE YOUR MOTIVES

As a writer, ask yourself why a lot.  Why are you writing, why are you writing about this, why are you mentioning this detail? So on and so forth.  As a writer, you can never ask why enough.

Determine the sort of book you want to write.   Do you want to write a popular book? Are you trying to write a book that other people will like, or are you trying to write a book that you will like without much concern for others?  Why are you trying to be a writer?  Do you want the attention writers get? Are you trying to change the world?  Would you be happy with a small, but well informed and loyal audience, or do you crave a large and boisterous audience? Are you writing because you crave fame, and money? Or are you writing because the subject matter you are crafting speaks to something you really believe in?

It is also important that you decide on the kind of books that are your favorite to read, and then to ask yourself whether those books that you love to read are the same type of books you want to write.  If not, why not?

As a writer, it really is better and easier the more honest you are with yourself. If you are writing because you want to be famous or because you want to earn a great deal of money, don’t fake yourself out and pretend that the real reason you are writing is because you want to make the world a better place. 

Whoever you are, and whatever you really want, start from there.

3)     PUBLISHING, LEARN THE MECHANICS

If you can intern with a publisher, do that.  If you can’t intern with a publisher, see if you can build connections with people who have or who are in the industry.  The more you know about the system of publishing, even if this means you get a job working at a bookstore, the better off you will be trying to get published.

WARNING FOR IDEALISTS:  The publishing world is more like the ‘making sausage world,’ than the uncorrupted ideals that most novices in the industry believe it to be.  Remain objective and approach the mechanics of book publishing as an engineer not as a philosopher.

4)     DO YOUR RESEARCH

If you want to write, learn your market.  In order to play baseball, you have to learn how the game works seeing the field once probably isn’t going to be enough.  Instead, you need to learn how your topic exists in the marketplace.  You need to learn your audience, and find out what they want to know.  This kind of research should happen in the early stages.

The easiest way to do this is to head out to your local library or your local bookstore and then to find the topic you want to write on and look at all the books written in that field.  Study the angles the other books were written in and then write a book that covers an angle no one else has covered. 

Have other books covered the aspects of your subject you are looking to present, read them. Then, you will want to write about things that they did not cover or that they covered poorly. 

If you are writing fiction, market research is a great deal harder.  Nonetheless, it won’t hurt to approach your research with the same steps as above.  Just, instead of writing to potentially make an editor happy, write for you and your story.

5)     WRITE YOUR BOOK

The most obvious step is the 5^th step of the first 5 things that you need to do to get published.  Nonetheless, tons of people try and write a chapter and a proposal and to get published from that.  If you are an established author this could work, or if you are some recognized authority on the subject you are trying to write on, this may work for you too.  For the rest of us, write first and ask to get published later.  That’s how it works.

As you write, you will find that the book makes all sorts of turns you were probably unaware of happening when you first began to write your book.  This sort of organic narrative processing is going to happen, so be open to exploring it as you write. 

In the beginning the most important thing to do is to write.  Write from the beginning until the end and the stop and see what you have.  Write your way to the end! Too many people try and polish and obsess with corrections in the middle of writing and end up getting so off track that they never finish the book they set out to write.  So, write to the end! 

The beginning of every project is exciting, but the middle of everything becomes a bit boring and this is true in writing as well. People often slag off in the middle and move on to something else before they finish, and this is a shame because as exciting as the beginning is, the end is even more exciting.  So, don’t back off while you’re writing.  There are more failures reached in life through the act of quitting or dropping out, than through any other act in the world. 

Push on writer, push on.

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