The Submission Process - Part 1
I’m taking a couple weeks off from doing book retrospectives and taking a swan dive into the process of book submissions. Most people who have never written a book, and don’t know anyone who ever has, have no idea as to how books go from page to print. Until I’d finished writing my first novel and did a little research, I didn’t either. Now, things are a little different in this day and age, what with the ability to nearly instantly self-publish your work, through the likes of Kindle Direct Publishing, Create Space, etc. However, there is still the traditional route for publication, which, despite my many, many, many, many failings… (there have been many!) I am for whatever reason, still pursuing.
So, this is how it goes:
1.) Write your book
Everyone assumes this is the biggest hurdle, but trust me, it’s the easiest. Anyone can write a book. It’ll probably just be terrible—my first attempt certainly was. The trick with writing a good book is… you know, I think I’m going to have to break into a sublist for this one, but I’ve already used numbers, so let’s go with roman numerals, shall we? We shall!
i. Write a book
ii. Edit that book (by which I mean, re-write it)
iii. Forget about that book (You probably won’t, but this is my advice all the same!)
iv. Write another book
v. Write another book
vi. Go back to your first book, read it, realise how terrible it is and that you are an infinitely better writer now
vii. Rewrite your first book
And there you have it, hopefully a book that isn’t just the worst. (I make no assurances!) And with that digression out of the way (this is my blog, and I never promised it would be concise) time for step two.
2.) Submit to literary agents
This is the crux of this blog post, so we’ll come back to it in a minute. But the idea is, you send off your work to a bunch of literary agencies and hopefully, someone will like your work, request more, then offer to represent you.
3.) Your literary agent sends your work off to publishers
In much the way you did, its now your agent’s turn to begin submitting, sending your book off to publishers (with whom they hopefully already have a decent preestablished working relationship) in the hopes of garnering you a book deal. I guess it depends on how good/ established the agent is (and how good your book is too, presumably) as to how successful this is, but by the end of it, you should hopefully have a book deal.
4.) Rewrites, editing, blah, blah, blah
Chances are, your agent already made you do a lot of this before they sent it off, so as not to embarrass themselves by how rough the initial work you sent them was. But inevitably, much like when producers and execs in Hollywood blockbusters rip apart the director’s cut of a film to produce a more marketable/wide appealing/audience friendly theatrical cut, the publisher, editors, proofers, etc. will insist on multiple, likely far-reaching, changes to the work, before they themselves turn their hands to the manuscript to produce the final novel.
Or… if you are Stephen King and your book is IT, you simply send the first draft of your manuscript as an attachment in an email and the publisher hits print without even opening the document.
5.) Pre-Book-Launch Stuff
All the obvious things happen here. Book covers, maybe some advertising. Chances are it’ll be a year from the moment the deal is made until your book hits the shelves.
6.) Book Launch
Congrats, you are now a millionaire bestseller who rivals J. K. Rowling or Dan Brown in wealth and readership… as if!
Okay, so that’s the general process, so let’s rewind a bit to the part I want to focus on here in this blog post… submitting to agents!
REWIND <
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Ahh, here we are…
2.) Submit to literary agents
Now, dear reader, you may be wondering why it is I want to spend so much time looking at this one specific aspect of getting your book published? The reason is, it is a hurdle I cannot seem to get past.
I may have two books published, but, currently they have both made it to print through the self-publishing route. Initially, I did have a book deal for Rise of the Apostate, but that was the result of a direct submission to a publisher, something that you can do, but few of the bigger publishers actually let you submit unsolicited manuscripts.
Rejection is part of being a writer… a big part. Everyone is very quick to point out the success stories of Harry Potter being rejected twelve times before a book deal was signed, but that was to publishers. I have no idea how many literary agents J. K. Rowling sent her work off to before Christopher Little decided to represent her. Maybe it was only a few, maybe it was hundreds—I don’t think it is public knowledge.
For me, with all the submissions I have sent off for Rise of the Apostate, Flight Through Infinity, Shadow of the Golden Dawn, and just recently, Conflux, I’m sitting far north of 150 rejections from literary agents. That is quite a lot. Some would probably conclude from that sheer amount of failure that I’m probably just a terrible writer… maybe they are right, but if you’ve made it nine hundred and fifty words into this post, you probably disagree.
So, how does it work? Well, to prevent this blog post rivalling War and Peace in length, it’s going to bleed over into the next one. ‘Leave them wanting more,’ they always say. Or perhaps more appropriate for an author, ‘Always end on a cliff hanger!’