Is a Traditional Publisher For You?

image: Freddie Marriage for Unsplash

Even in an age of self-publishing and Amazon publishing gone mad, my editing clients still have the same question: What are my chances of having my book published by a traditional publisher?

I have to be honest with you here. It looks hard, and it’s harder than it looks. Everyone who has written a book feels as though they’ve done their job and now it’s time to sit back and wait for the bidding wars as the book is auctioned off to a major publisher.

Reality is very different.

There are three ways of getting published in the conventional sense of the word (although stay tuned: more are emerging): traditional publishing, self-publishing, and using a subsidy publisher; and each uses a different method. How does the traditional model work?

There are a couple of options:

• Submitting your work directly to a publisher. This is known as “over the transom,” since manuscripts used to be tossed into an editor’s office in precisely that manner. There are resources available to help you, notably Penguin/Random House’s Writers Market and Information Today’s Literary Market Place as well as Poets & Writers. These sites will tell you exactly what each publisher is looking for, and what each publisher wants in the way of contact (query letter, book proposal, entire manuscript, etc.).