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Want to Get Published? Here’s How to Start
Very few writers write for themselves. We write because it’s a way of reaching out to others, to sharing our world, our stories, our thoughts, our fears, and our hopes. And the best route to sharing is, of course, getting published.
“Getting published” is itself becoming an archaic term in a time of instant ebooks and Uncle George putting his rants out on Kindle. For the sake of argument here, then, I’m going to talk specifically about the traditional publishing model, in which a publisher produces your books and pays you royalties from them. And most of what I’m going to say deals with writing fiction, though I suspect you’re bright enough to apply it to nonfiction as well.
Even if you’ve finished writing your book, you have a long way to go before it’s ready to be submitted to an agent or publisher. Why? Because you have only one chance with it. Either they’re going to like it, or like the kernel of it, and ask you for revisions, or they’re not going to like it. But you can’t submit the same novel to the same agent eighteen times and expect them to read — for free — every single draft. You have to have a finished product.
And that means having it edited.
But wait. There might even be another step first!
