Getting published
The day you sell your first book, you cross over into another country: the land of the published writer. This automatically makes you an authority on the whole process: of finding an agent, selling a manuscript, eventually seeing it in print, and all the joys and horrors that accompany the progression from first idea to finished product.
But everyone’s experience is different. What happened to me, what worked and what didn’t, may or may not be the right path for you. My advice would be to use what you can, take encouragement or comfort or inspiration from my saga, and then apply it to your own situation and, with work and luck, eventually you’ll have your own firsthand story to tell.
The simple answer to how you get a book published is: Write a good book.
That sounds glib, but it’s really not meant to be. A lot of people think writing is easy and that getting published must be, too. After all, you only have to have an idea and type it up, right?
This is where folks get into trouble, because this notion makes no distinction between the conception of a book and its execution. Somehow the myth has become prevalent that it’s an agent’s or an editor’s job to take an author’s crude musings, even her random thoughts and impulses, and turn them into a marketable book. In fact, unless you are a celebrity or someone with a tempting hook, like a 9/11 survivor or Anna Nicole Smith, you are—surprise, surprise—going to actually be expected to write your own book.
And, unfair as it may seem, you will likewise be competing with literally thousands of other would-be authors whose manuscripts and proposals come pouring across agents’ desks every year. Not only will you be expected to produce your very own work, but that work, in order to have even a perfunctory shot at getting into print, is going to have to be better than everything, or just about everything, else that lands in that agent’s pile on any given day. Not “adequate,” not “passable,” but better. An unknown writer has to be able to prove her stuff right out of the gate, to make a publisher willing to take the gamble of investing in her future, with the goal of recouping its investment.
That means that what you send out to agents should be as polished, as professional, as publishable as you can possibly make it. The biggest mistake most beginners make, after that of having unrealistic expectations, is sending out work that isn’t ready to be seen by industry professionals. It isn’t enough to have a great idea, or a flair for words. You have to make your manuscript as close to perfect as is possible, and make the first few pages completely irresistible. If you can’t do that, keep working on it till you can. If and when you can do that, it will be hard for agents to turn you down; in fact, you might even find yourself in the happy situation of having to turn them away.