How 2 get UR book published.

I really wanna get my book pulished(right now I'm typing it so that other people are able to read it). Got any tips. I only posted this cuz one of us is a published author.

This is going to sound harsh, but you need to hear it.

Start by learning to communicate in standard English. If you submit a query letter to a publisher using "wanna" for "want to", "cuz" for "because" and the like, if you don't check for misspellings and if you don't use proper grammar, your letter and any accompanying manuscript will go straight into the wastepaper basket.

ditto for #2

i am positive people who write "alot" as one word and cuz for because are nice people. I just wouldn't read anything they wrote, nor hang with them.

Call it uppity, but it's not. Those fellows just do not have anything that I want.

ditto here as well.

Learn how to spell. (Many browsers will now spell check for you).

Use proper grammar.

Start the difficult work of actually learning how to write something people will want to read.

Read lots of books from many different genres. You can learn something from all writers even if it is how not to write.

Read some Books on writing a good one to start with:
The book on writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well by Paula LaRocque

FYI I do use spellcheck and completely spell out words when I write my book, just not on the computer cuz then I want to type the message as fast as I can and be done with it.

On the computer it's reflex to use abrieviations and shorten up words, but with writing I'm such a perfectionist at getting each and every word just so that it annoys even me.

Goodwitch,

I do have a few tips for you. First, believe in yourself and your work. Be positive!

If you are looking for an agent, try The Literary Market Place. It is very hard to get noticed by a publishing company without an agent. Also, you can search for agents online, but make sure you thoroughly check the agent out. You cannot trust just anyone. If an agent asks you for money up front, chances are they are trying to scam you. An agent should only get paid when you do and that is when the book sales.

Writing a query letter is challenging. You want to catch their attention, so you should keep it short. Think of something powerful that you can state in your letter to make them want to read more. I have used the following to spark interest about my book: How can a dead man kidnap someone?

You also need to search for agents that are interested in the genre you have written in. On agents sites, they list what they are looking for. Make sure that you pick the correct one. You more or less have once chance to spark their interest in your book, so make it good.

However, you can choose to self publish. Self publishing is hard work and you are in charge of promoting and selling your book. I self published Fatal Kidnapping and have picked up a lot of interest from it. I am not saying that self publishing is the way to go for everyone, but it has worked for me. You have to start somewhere and self publishing has made many author's get noticed and published through traditional publishing houses.

I hope this helps!

Thanks for all the tips. What is self publishing(that probably makes me sound really dumb,but if I knew much about publishers and pulishing I wouldn't have posted this topic.)

Self publishing means that you publish your book yourself, instead of going through a traditional publisher. There are many companies that will sign you up. I hear a lot of good things about lulu.com. I did not go through them, but I have not heard anything bad about them.

You can type in self publishing on google search and you will find many.

I self-published my novel "Canals and Meaning" in 1992. I set up Bubbling Over Books with £2,500 I inherited in my father's will. I roped friends in (paid) to check out the MS for gramatical errors, produce the art work for the cover and the Bubbling Over Books logo, and the photo for the back cover - the photo is in my profile. The printing cost £2,000 for 1,000 copies. The more copies you order the cheaper it becomes per unit.

The down side is that once you have your 1,000 copies you need to get a distributer, plus secure publicity for your book. That was my downfall: I didn't find out until after I had published the novel that all the big distributers will not take on anything less than 10,000 copies. Plus the national press will not review self-published books, so you have to rely on getting publicity through local newspapers. I got several big splashes in the local press, Manchester Evening News, Metro, and most of the city's indie magazines and fanzines; but unfortunately the publicity generated only brought in a few orders for the novel.

I went around the bookshops, who took between 2 and 5 copies of the novel on a sale or return basis; and I took out adverts in trade papers, which did not bring in enough orders to cover the cost of the advertising.

My main outlet for sales over the years has been the occasional stand-up comedy gigs I do at local folk and jazz clubs, but I still have 400 or so copies of the novel up in the loft.

Summing up: it was an interesting experience (and good fun) going though the full process of setting up a novel for publication; but the sales bit was a pain in the arse.
I would never put anyone off self-publishing their work, but would advise that you get your distribution and sales outlets sorted before you start out.

Shine on brightly
Michael

Goodwitch, I'm betting you're young--or, at the very least, new to writing. I may be wrong, and you may dismiss my advice because of that error, but I'd put a few bucks on the proposition.

Simply, here's the secret to publishing:

Write something that a professional thinks that people want to read.

It's that basic, and that important. Write a good story/novella/novel, and you'll find that people want to publish it.

I'm completely against self-publishing as a career path, because I've seen too many writers go that route and simply disappear into the vast sea of shit that gets printed every year. I'm not arguing that good books don't get self-published, because some do. I'm not arguing that many books that appear on the NYT best-seller list aren't crap, because obviously some are. And I would never tell one of my friends not to self-publish, because what the hell do I know? I'm not Stephen King nor Judith Krantz nor Dan Brown, and I don't have my thumb on the pulse of modern publishing. If I've learned anything in my almost forty years, it's that I don't know anything.

But you asked for our opinions.

To get published, you have to do certain things. First and foremost is to know your language and love it. Andy and Lilith and Bill are absolutely right--if you're going to use English, use it correctly. You may be in a hurry to get your thoughts across, but someone who uses shortcuts on a writers' forum board is someone who's going to use shortcuts in her fiction. Be proud of this language of ours, be awed by its scope and its provenance, and come to everything you write with the proper reverence. You're going to be competing with Shakespeare and Keats and Milton and Hemingway and Faulkner and Irving and MacDonald and King and Sayers and Dickens, and if you walk into the ring without a proper pair of gloves you're going to get knocked out in the first round.

And trust me--it IS a competition. You may be enamored of your creation, you may think you've come up with an idea so wonderful that the world won't be able to help but to fall in love with you, you may think that you're going to set the universe on fire with your skill and your passion. But none of that is going to help you when you submit a story to an editor and you've got two spelling errors, a sentence-structure problem and too many exclamation points in your first paragraph.

(and as an aside--ideas are worthless. We've all got great ideas. I come up with five or six a day that would make wonderful stories, novels, screenplays. Ideas are cheap and easy, and every idiot's got a thousand of them. It's the EXECUTION that matters. You don't believe me now, but if you stick with this business and follow your muse (that inconstant bitch), eventually you'll see the wisdom of the statement)

Second--know your market. If you write short horror fiction, you'd better have read at least an issue or two of Cemetery Dance or Dark Wisdom or Flesh & Blood before you start throwing your stories out into the void. If you write 'literary' fiction, pick up a copy of Tin House, read every piece of literature Vanity Fair publishes, and Playboy, and Esquire. Science Fiction? If you don't know the type of tale M of F&Sf and Asimov's and Locus print on a regular basis, you're wasting postage and editors' time.

Third--if you don't read, you're f***ed. You must read bestsellers, you must read B-list fiction, you must read magazines and cereal boxes and the fine print on your tax forms. You must breathe and imbibe and ingest words, no matter where you find them. That list of writers I wrote earlier in this post? If you don't at least know who all of them are (regardless of whether you've read them), you've got some serious work to do before you have a chance to make money or a name for yourself in this biz.

Have you read 'The Lottery' by Shirley Jackson? 'Hills Like White Elephants' by Ernest Hemingway? 'A Rose For Emily' by William Faulkner? 'Of Mice and Men'? 'The Decameron'? 'The Iliad'? 'Beowulf'? 'The Maltese Falcon'? 'Dune'? 'Rabbit, Run'? 'Wuthering Heights'? 'Huckleberry Finn'?

Can you at least identify who WROTE those stories and novels? If not, you might want to hit your local library and do a little remedial work before you start thinking about publishing.

I'm not claiming that MY work approaches the skill level these men and women have exhibited, and I'm not sure I'll ever get there. But because I've read Fritz Leiber I know what the best in fantasy fiction can be, and because I've read Dan Simmons I know that great writing can surpass the arbitrary limits 'genre fiction' has had imposed upon it. If you want to write crime, you'd better know Hammett and Chandler and MacDonald and Ellroy and Connelly back and forth--and you'd better think that you have the skills to join their company someday.

Jeez--this post is getting long as hell, and I've got another five thousand words to churn out before the end of the weekend. I'm sorry if I came off as an a-hole, or if I didn't give you the answer you wanted, and if you folks want to flag me into oblivion I'll be fine with that. Otherwise, I'll be back soon with more of my thoughts.

You wanna get published? You wanna hold a book in your hands with your name on the spine? Go lulu.com.

That is the first time I have heard anyone mention the Lottery in 30 years, It will leave an impression.

#5

The issue with that type of writing, just wanting to get it done, is going to filter into your writing that isn't for the book. So even if you have this outstanding manuscript, the slightest glitch in your cover letter, and the agent will reject it.

Try to make all your writing as pristine as your book. You will appear more professional in that respect.

Get your book critiqued, get it rewritten, get it edited and proofed. That costs a lot of money.

Then unless it or you are outstanding in some way self-publish it, then you have to market it, and try to find reviewers etc.

Is it really worth putting it on the market?

If by some rare chance you may get a major publisher to take it on, then after the early stages above they will edit and proof it up to 20 times.

Can your product ever equal a mainstream product for quality?