The rocky road to publishing

Many people have asked me: How did you get published? Your writing is no better and in some cases not as good as some of the people in your writing group.

Well part of the answer is that many of them are also published authors. The other part is the luck of finding a relatively new publisher who liked my story. And lastly the group of writers at IWW helped make the manuscript much more salable. So for all you fledgling authors out there, let me urge you to join a writers group where you submit your work for criticism and offer criticism of others work. The learning process is rapid and invaluable.

As to my particular case after completing six novel length manuscripts (some submitted to publishing houses and some not), and having received enough rejection slips to wallpaper my entire house, I almost gave up. But I couldn’t stop writing. It is my therapy.  So I joined a writers group — Internet Writers Workshop — to be exact. Slowly but surely, thanks to the guidance of the other authors on the site, I began to learn how to write more effectively and more efficiently. Prior to that, I was simply a story teller, emphasis on the telling part. Literally (my first big obstacle to overcome), I told readers my stories. I told them what was happening. I told them what my characters felt. I told them what my characters thought, and I literally told them what was going to happen. Boring.

My dialogue has always been fairly strong so that was a good thing. But I had to learn to get inside the head of my characters and SHOW how they felt, what they thought, what they saw and how it affected them.

I had to learn to use active and varied verbs. I had to learn not to use adverbs and not too many adjectives. I had to learn to eliminate filters (explanations) in my sentences. I had to learn plots and subplots and how to always move the characters toward accomplishing the goal of the plot.

After all that, I wrote much better. I began thinking maybe some of it was worth trying to get published. My first attempts sent off to the large publishing houses resulted is a new batch of rejections. Then I had to start the learning process all over — writing the dreaded query letter.  After more than a hundred attempts and as many criticisms, I settled on one. Using several sites on the internet for addresses (both email and snail mail), I first submitted my query to agents since that is the best way to get published with one of the bigger publishers. I had a few interested in that endeavor, but no takers.

All the while this learning curve and publishing quest was developing; I continued to tweak my current novel — OUTLAWS. I soon found that one must have a recognizable name, some newsworthy event, be an established author, or write a truly wonderful story as with J.K. Rawlings, (and even then there’s no assurances) to even get a look from the large publishers.

Through sites like Predators and Editors on the internet I discovered a growing group of small publishers who were most likely to accept new authors. Many of the small houses publish only e-books. I had never considered that avenue. I thought a book had to be published in paper before it was converted to an electronic book.

I started subbing my query letter in earnest. How shocked (conditioned to rejections) I was when a publisher asked for a three chapter sample of my novel. Two weeks later they asked for the entire novel. Two weeks after that they offered me a publishing contract.

Of course with every jubilant moment there’s always a smack down. That publisher went belly up due to poor management in a down economic trend. I started the subbing process all over again. After several query letters were sent out into cyberspace I received another request for three chapters. Shortly after that, a request for the entire manuscript. Somebody watches over us fools and dreamers. When that publisher sent me a contract, the managing editor attached a note: Didn’t I offer you a contract when I was with Aspen Mountain Press? Yes she had. Since the demise of Aspen Mountain she had set up her own publishing company and was well on her way to becoming a powerhouse small publishing firm.

Since that time, it’s been back to the learning process. Writing tag lines for the novel, writing blurbs to attract buyers, writing an excerpt from an exciting part of the novel. Then going through the process of cover design with the staff artist and deciding what best describes what’s inside the book. Then the editing with one of the publishers staff editors. They actually want you to cut out a lot of your wonderful words and rewrite whole sections. It’s painful — but not deadly.

So after I finished writing OUTLAWS in May of 2010 and going through all the steps listed above, the novel will finally be released on May 18 2012. Two years after writing. I have no idea how long it took to write the book but I know it has gone through hundreds of rewrites and tweaks. One would have to be a J.K.Rawlings to even come close to making enough money to pay for all those hours. But that’s not why we do it. We writers simply can’t stop writing.

Bill