Getting Published
Publication is acheivable by anyone who is prepared to work hard enough.
We all learn to write in school so it’s easy to think that writing a book is easy – for some perhaps it is. For others it is an apprenticeship that requires time and patience, and when your book is written, it’s essential you approach the business of publication as exactly that – as a business, a business that requires professionalism at every level.
There are now hundreds of hugely informative blogs and websites that provide tips for writers, several are listed here. Read them, learn and apply to your own writing. Writing is rewriting – literally taking all those thousands of words and re-crafting them, adjusting, tweaking, moving them on. Stephen King says kill your darlings – delete/rewrite all those lines and phrases you love (we all have them), the metaphors you are most proud off, the similies that sing to you. But always save your updated drafts under a new name so you can go back to your darlings, to your original draft – and see how much better the rewrites are!
When you think you are ready to submit I would strongly advice having your opening chapters critiqued by a published author. They will be in the best position to tell you whether you are ready to submit, whether your book needs more work, and exactly what that work entails. Inkwell Writers Workshops provide a criquing service that is reasonable and thorough and run a Getting Published workshop where you can meet the people who will be reading your script and find out exactly what they are looking for.
Ensure you do your research on the publishers and agents you choose to submit to – there’s no point in submitting a children’s picture book to an agent who specialises in non-fiction. Check out which agent within an agency handles your type of work, check out who else they represent. Try and find a natural fit.
Writing for Success by Patricia O'Reilly - ideal for the Irish market
The Writers’ Handbook and the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook both detail all the publishers and agents in the UK and Ireland. Patricia O’Reilly’s book Writing for Success is ideal for the Irish market and gives lots of submission tips.
Publishing is a business and you need to approach submission as you would applying for a job, professionally and thoroughly, making sure your manuscript is beautifully presented (clean!), double spaced in a legible font like Time New Roman or Arial. You want to make an impression with your professionalism as well as your writing.
And the publishing business is very small – network by attending book launches, writers lunches and workshops. Meeting writers and publishers is a great way to get known and build relationships. Build a public profile (see below), make yourself intersting to publishers and they will look forward to reading your submission!
Creating an Author Profile
Today getting published isn’t just about good writing, it’s also about the author, the author’s profile and their ability to sell books. When a manuscript is considered for publication it’s read by an editor, but also by the sales and marketing team who will gauge where the book fits into the market, how strong the author’s public profile is and his/her marketability.
If you are serious about getting published and getting ready to submit, creating an author profile isn’t as hard as it sounds. Start by trying to get your work out to as many competitions and on to as many websites as possible. Stuart Neville was spotted by his agent Nat Sobel after he posted a short story on Thuglit.com. For crime writers the Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger Award for a first novel is a great opportunity. Writer Bob Burke The Third Pig Detective Agency had huge help from the free critiquing website You Write On See if you can get a book reviewing slot in the local paper or on your local library website.
A web presence is becoming an essential tool. It can be as simple as starting a free blog using www.wordpress.com or Google’s blogger tools and linking into the huge network of bloggers (who all buy books). Put book reviews on your blog, interviews, anything that provides interesting content and will get you readers. Post your own work and use the site as a shop window to introduce yourself to readers, agents and publishers.
You can use your blog or website as a platform to submit articles to your local newspaper/radio station, the parish magazine. You are aiming to get your name known, to broaden your network of contacts and to get your work read. Have your web address printed on your business cards with your contact details, and your job descritpion Writer (because that’s what you are). You can get FREE (hard to believe I know) business cards from Vista Print which are ideal for authors – I use them regulary. The cards are high quality and you only pay the postage.
If you want the search engines to find you, you need to update your blog several time each day, or to create a website. This doesn’t have to be expensive. I use Hosting Ireland for all my websites – they provide a first class service and (so important), are at the end of the phone if you need them. Will, Craig and Phil have got me out of more fixes and solved more headaches than I care to mention! Their prices are competitive but you can’t put a price on first class customer service, particularly if, like me, you aren’t a techie whiz kid – I can’t recommend them highly enough. I’ve tried using US hosters for other websites and it has been a total nightmare (bangs head on desk at the very thought).
If you register your website (domain) name and get a Pro hosting package with Hosting Ireland, when you log in to your new site you’ll find a control panel that, near bottom right hand corner, has a smiley face icon – Fantastico gives you access to free website building tools like Joomla and WordPress.org. Joomla for instance uses drag and drop technology and is easy to use. This is a wordpress.org site, and is a bit of a work in progess as you can see, but I’m getting there! There are hundreds of templates to choose from and you can create custom headers so your site will look unique and professional. It’s really not difficut – my nine year old daughter created her own blog in under an hour.
So start thinking marketing, get your business cards and build your profile!
© Sam Blake 2010. All rights reserved.
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About Sam Blake
Sam Blake is Vanessa O'Loughlin's alter ego. When she isn't reading or writing crime fiction, Vanessa runs the Irish writing resources website www.writing.ie and brings best selling authors to Inkwell Writers Workshops to guide and inspire aspiring writers. Vanessa is PRO for Irish PEN. As Sam Blake, Vanessa gets to do what she enjoys most - write! Find out more about Sam Blake...
[...] Blake has a blog with information about crime writing. It has a page on getting published. You can also connect with Vanessa at Inkwell Writers, and also @InkwellHQ on [...]