Book Publishing 101 please...

[pokemon_master]

Hey guys, one of my mates is keen on being an author one day, and I too think it's a cool idea and might persue it later if I want to. Problem is, neither of us has any clue about the publishing industry..

I was hoping that someone could give us a quicky lesson on how to publish a book successfully and as what exactly we need to do. I don't think that many of you guys are well-known published authors (in which case, the question should be what are you doing here?! LOL) but I am hoping that someone is an expert in this field; at least enough to get us off the ground one day.

Any tips are welcome!

 

[janeossie]

I'm not an expert but I do have dreams of becoming a writer one day. I have finished a creative writing course at the open uni and can often be seen notebook in hand scribbling some rubbish, which will never be read by anyone but me!

What sort of writing does your friend want to do? Fiction or non-fiction? I can probably recommend some good books for fiction writing.

One piece of advice is write everyday. I have a private journal, edit and write quite a few bits for the works monthly newsletter (often in my own time.) Write for the departmental Portal. Infact I try and write as much as possible.

 

[carolfoy]

look at the publishers who specifically publish the genre of writing your friend does, then write to them asking for a list of agents they deal with, go directly to each agent and get the name of the person who reads the first draft of manuscript, then its just a case of sending copy after copy until someone deigns to read it. Prepare for a lot of rejection letters!

 

[janeossie]

One book to try as a start for info on publishers/agents and all things like that would be the writers handbook, it gets updated each year. If you do a search on amazon your sure to find it.

 

[jjpenguin]

The other day I heard that there is a website (can't remember the name, sorry) where you can "host" your manuscript and if someone likes it they can order the book.

 

[Booknut]

If you are keen to self-publish I would just google that. You can then try to get some local bookshops to display your book. A lot of smaller bookshops will gladly display books by local authors. Some writers have started out that way. One huge self-published book in the US/Canada (not sure about here, I wasn't living here then) was the Celestine Prophecy.

Don't bother sending a book to a publishing house, they mostly deal with agents. You need to get an agent that specialises in whatever genre you are writing. And don't send out dozens of submissions to agents, do them in small batches of 2-3 at a time.

And don't be discouraged by rejection. My friend's sister had her share of rejections and now has a best selling book and its being turned into a movie by channel 4! And look at the silly people who turned down JK!!!

Good luck, its not easy but its worth it!