10 EASY- AND NOT SO EASY- STEPS TO GETTING YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED BY THE BIG TIME COMPANIES

10 EASY- AND NOT SO EASY- STEPS TO GETTING YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED BY THE BIG TIME COMPANIES

Publishing in this big world is obviously not the easiest thing to do unless you self-publish the book. I’ve been researching a lot about it lately so I thought that it would be useful to put up a guide. I know Shadow also put up an awesome guide about this but I found a couple other things to add that she didn’t mention but I recommend you check out hers too. Anyways, these are my 10 easy- and not so easy- steps to getting your book published by the big time companies.

Step #1: Finish your novel
There are tons of new aspiring authors out there as well as already established ones so as you can tell, you’ve got a lot of work cut out for you to make it big time in the writing world. Publishers are already going to have literally hundreds of manuscripts to read that pile up. If they’ve got that many, they aren’t going to want to waste their time focusing on an unfinished novel and even if they agree, they may forget they agreed to let you or not like the finished product. It is better to show them the finished product first.

Step #2: Take a Break
When you’re done with your novel, step away from it and leave it to rot in your computer’s hard-drive for all eternity! Mwahahaha- Well maybe not for all eternity, but you should take a break from working on it for about a month after you are done writing it. I know it sounds crazy, but sometimes we just need a break. Let loose a little bit. Then when you come back 4-6 weeks later, you can look at your novel with fresh eyes.

Step #3: Editing
Part 1: Rewriting
Ignore Mom and Dad and your neighborhood tree hugger lecturing about wasting paper and ink which equals money and wasting of resources and killing trees. Print out your whole manuscript onto paper and grab the red pen. Trust me, paper and pen is a lot better than computer editing. Plus you can see the things you’ve changed and go over them and examine why you changed them. Not to mention, after writing your whole story on the computer, it’s nice to take a break and use plain ‘ole paper sometimes! Basically, re-read your whole story- no matter if it’s only 50 pages or up to 500! If you see something dull or bland, re-write it. You can keep the same theme but just write it better, or add something else to it to give it a little something extra. Something isn’t written well, tweak it. Just change things up a bit. Add in dialogue or use a thesaurus to look up some fresh, more interesting words to brighten the section up. If something doesn’t flow right with the story, get rid of it. Just use that red pen and “X” the whole thing out. If you think of a great new idea while editing, add it in! Look up more interesting words in a thesaurus to give things a kick or spice up a little part of your story. Mainly, make your reader feel the story. You want to use good, crisp, descriptive words that make your reader feel like they are there in the story. You want them to dream about your book during the night- make it that descriptive. And take out unnecessary words. “Like, for instance, well, you know, what if, plus, not to mention, just, but, kind of,” are just several examples of things to beware of. You want to make your story as short and concise as possible but yet descriptive. For instance [I know I totally just said not to use that, but this isn’t a story so. . . . xP], instead of using- She lay in bed wishing. If only she could be as good of as dancer as her friend. Then she would get all the attention. The way she twirled and spun around the shiny, glossy, wood paneled floors made her blood boil with jealousy. No one watched when she stumbled and fell clumsily and awkwardly to the ground, landing in a tangled heap of arms and legs intertwined. They just pointed and laughed instead of oohing and ahing.- Change it to- She lay in bed wishing she could be as good as a dancer as her friend and get all the attention. Her friend twirled and spun around the glossy wood paneled floors in a way that made her blood boil with jealousy. No one watched when she messed up and ended up in a tangled heap of arms and legs intertwined on the floor- The whole point of editing is just to improve the story. Make it even better than it was before.
Part 2: Revision
Some people tend to prefer revision first but I like to rewrite first because after you rewrite it you still have to revise the whole new parts. Revision is simpler than rewriting. All you’re doing is correcting grammatical mistakes like punctuation, spelling, grammar, and other stuff. Pretty much, anything your English teacher would yell at you or dock points off your homework for! xD

Step#4: Share It
Remember how we put our story away for awhile so that we could have a fresh look at it? Well we need an even fresher look at our story so that we can improve it even more. That is why we need others opinions on it too. My first recommendations would be your parents. As much as you may not want to show it to them, trust me: it will be worth it. And if you don’t like their advice, remember, you don’t have to take anyone’s advice if you don’t want to! It’s your story! If your friends are a big writer fanatic like you send it to them as well! They’ll be around the age your shooting for if you’re writing for teenagers around our age. Even if none of your friends write like you, are any of them big readers? That works as well! You can always send it in to a professional editor as well which I recommend.

Step#5: Finding the Right Agent
If you are going to self publish your story, I suggest you stop reading now so you don’t have to waste your time. xD From now on I’ll be talking about finding good publishers and agents to get your book in Barnes & Nobles. [or the library or any other book store]

Even before sending it into the publishers, you need to find a good agent. I suggest checking out the Literary Marketplace. Anyone who’s anyone in the writing world is in there. It is published yearly so you should check out the 2009 edition. It’s about $20 if I remember correctly but if you don’t want to spend your money on it, check it out at your local library. When looking for an agent, look for someone who helps publish other books in the same genre as yours. Although you will do the work to get it ready, your agent is the one who will send in your manuscript to the publisher as most publishers won’t accept work from just authors. For example, only an agent can send in a manuscript to Scholastic. They don’t take the work if the author sends it!

Step#6: Finding the Right Publishing Company
I’m not 100% sure as I’ve never been through the process but from what I’ve learned, you and your agent will probably need to find a publishing company to send your book in to. When looking for your company, look for ones that publish books in the same genre as yours. For example, the book that I am working on is fantasy so the companies I’m going to try to get into first are: Bloomsbury, Little Brown, Scholastic, Harper Collins, and MT Books. Each company will have strict, detailed submission guidelines and each step must be followed perfectly. If it doesn’t they will just throw it into the junk pile. Even if it costs a little more, if you can, print out your manuscript on professional paper. The company will take your story seriously if you take it seriously. Next, send it in a self-addressed stamped envelope. You don’t want to take the risk of the publisher not sending it back to you because you forgot that little detail. In the envelope, place your manuscript and anything else the company requires such as a title page, query, synopsis, ect.

Step #7: Waiting
After you send in your story, wait. Read books, hang out with friends, write a short story or poem for a magazine, go to the beach, go do sports. But whatever you do, it is very important to not contact the publishing company before the customary waiting time is over. Even after the time is over, I would recommend waiting a couple more days or even a week if they still haven’t replied. No matter how frustrating it is to wait, remember, if you contact them before the waiting time is over, you will be considered impatient and unprofessional.

Step #8: Be Prepared
Be prepared for rejection. Expect to have to send your manuscript to 10 or more companies. For example, Harry Potter was rejected countless times before it was finally accepted by Bloomsbury and now look where it is! Remember, when you finally do find the right company, it’ll all be worth it. It is extremely rare to be accepte4d by the first few companies you send your story in to. So don’t be discouraged by rejection. Learn from it instead!

Step #9: Check Things Over
If you get rejected, don’t lose heart. Like I said before, learn from it! Instead of being disappointed, double check your work. Are you completely satisfied with your manuscript? Make minor changes, make major changes. Do anything you can to make it better. Talk it over with your parents, your friends, your agent, even the members here on Twig! What went wrong? How can you learn from it and use the rejection to your advantage? How can you make the story better? Why do you think the story was rejected? Was it just not the right company? How can you fix these problems?

Step #10: Do it Again
Go through Step #6 through Step #8 again. Just basically repeat the whole process but learn from your mistakes last time and get it perfect this time. Find a new company with your agent, follow the guidelines, wait patiently and don’t pester the company too early, and be prepared for rejection. And if you get rejected again, double check it with Step #9 and do it all over again. And again and again and again! Do it again until it works. Just wait for the right company to come along now matter how frustrating or annoying the long process of publishing is.

OMG, this is an AMAZING guide. It's gonna help me even more than mine did. XD I just wanna comment on two parts, though.

#3 - You can do the revision and rewriting at one time if you print it out, and type it back into the computer. XD That's what I actually had to do for DS before I had a flash drive - the whole thing - just to get it onto the computer in my room. And it's way better than it ever was now.

#8 - This is just on the HP part. XD I read in a book once a little story about a lady who was totally broke, and only had enough money to send two manuscripts out, with the postage and all. And she got her book accepted. The book was Harry Potter. So I had to contradict you, but if I'm remembering this right, I don't think HP was rejected all that much. XD

#3 Ya, I would probably end up doing them a the same time anyways, but I would probably still check the revision afterwards. But I will probably end up doing it, being the person I am but thats just what they tell you to. xD

#8 Oh really? I'm not for sure about that, I just now that I read that on the internet once. . . . I really don't know! xP

Awesome guide!
Editing my book would be a pure nightmare, as it is 90% junk, so I'm pretty happy with self-publishing for now
If I every manage to write a book which has less than 50% junk, I'll try and get it published xD
After revising, of course!

Haha. I haven't got your book yet but I'm sure it's awesome!

Thanks. However, you do write worse when you just write whatever gets into your head
The story I'm writing right now, I think, is pretty good, but it's only a short-ish one.

Awe. I'm sure yours is awesome!

This was awesome! Thanks for the tips.

Thanks and your welcome! xD

Nice guide.

Thanks Gri!

This is fantastic, I'm going to use it Rep!!

That's an AMAZING guide!

TOTALLY AWESOMENESS! :D:D


I'm sleepy...

This is an awesome guide Dream! I am not planning to do this anytime soon but when I get a little older, maybe.

these helped out a lot thanks

This is a really great guide!

yeah i know it is good job !