How Do You Go About Writing & Publishing a Book?
Writing and publishing a book is an endeavor fraught with trial. Many successful authors underwent significant difficulties when trying to publish their first books, and often never publish until their second or third book. Publishers and literary agents look over many manuscripts a day, so it's important to form a compelling literary vision and an exciting proposal, as well as demonstrate and maintain a strong work ethic.
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Instructions
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Brainstorm ideas and make sure to write them down. While recording ideas, try not to self-edit. Brainstorming is about coming up with as many ideas as possible without slowing down to critique.
Look over your idea list and pick a few that really appeal to you. Remember that it takes weeks and months to write, so the chosen idea should be one that you will want to concentrate on for some time.
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Create an outline and start writing. Decide on a writing schedule and stick to it. Decide how many hours you wish to spend writing or how many pages you'll need to finish within a given amount of time.
Falling behind schedule is not the end of the world. Don't waste time feeling bad, just get back on the horse and keep going.
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Start researching different publishers once you have a significant portion of the book written and the main ideas formed. Find books similar to your ideas and see which publishers took those authors under their wings. For example, writers working on children's books might want to look into Allen & Unwin Book Publishers.
Most publishers have detailed websites where they spell out submission guidelines and the documents they want to see from potential writers. Applying writers should follow these guidelines to the letter--editors and publishers buried under a pile of manuscripts frequently won't even look at applications that don't hold to their standards.
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Begin self-promoting. In the 21st century, publishers like to see writers who have maintained successful and well-frequented blogs. Many writers of popular blogs later published books. Geoff Manaugh's "BLDGBLOG" or Alex Ross' "The Rest is Noise" are two examples of blogs turned into books.
One way to garner traffic to your blog is to post links on Facebook, comment on other blogs with similar interests and maintain a Twitter account centered around the blog's focus. Though results may not be immediate, these tactics help many writers.
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Write for magazines. Publishing experience of any kind is a strong selling point to publishers and literary agents. Write short stories or reviews, preferably within a related field to your manuscript.
Talk to other writers about their experiences with writing and publishing. Also, have other writers, friends or interested parties edit portions of the book, as other perspectives will help during the writing process and result in a strong manuscript.
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Find a literary agent. Apply and attend as many writer's conferences as possible. Also look at published books similar to the manuscript for literary agent names. According to Fern Reiss, the CEO of Publishinggame.com, many authors thank their literary agents in the acknowledgments.
Have a finished manuscript when contacting literary agents. The first 30 pages should be finished because literary agents like to see writers who can grab and hold a reader's attention quickly.
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References
Resources
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