#publishing advice

[writingwithfolklore]

A Master Guide to the Three Main Forms of Publishing

There are many ways to get published nowadays, but traditional, self, and hybrid are the three most popular, so here’s the gist of what you need to know for each:

Traditional Publishing

This type of publishing goes through a publishing house who often have their own editors, artists, marketing team, etc. to launch your book. They will make your cover for you, format and edit your book, nominate your book for awards and may organize events like a launch party, book signings, speaker roles at festivals etc. They are your book’s team!

Some publishing houses accept cold queries (pitches for your unpublished manuscript) from you, but many only accept queries from agents. Agents are not necessary for traditional publishing, but they can definitely help get you in front of some of the bigger publishing houses. In my opinion, I would recommend an agent for if you want writing to be your career, but would not recommend one if you’re just looking to publish one or two books.

To get an agent, you go through essentially the same process as you would trying to get a publishing house, except you’re sending your query to different agents instead. Querying is very, very difficult, tends to take a lot of time, and will force you to face many rejections. It’s important to be prepared for when you don’t encounter instant success.

If an agent likes your query letter, they may request your full manuscript, and if they like that, they may sign you on as a client. From here, the agent will take over all the work of sending your manuscript to publishing houses. They will also act as your representative to the publishing house, and will protect you from getting scammed or not getting the deal you deserve.

Most important to remember! You never have to pay for any of these services. The money works like this: You write a book, an agent believes in the book so they sell it to a publishing house—the agent takes a cut of those profits and you get the rest (this is called an advance). The publishing house then sells the book to the public, and any profit they make after your advance, they get a cut of, your agent gets a cut of, and then you get whatever is left.

Essentially: these people make money by selling your book, not from you. If you have to pay them for any reason, you are being scammed.

Pros of Trad Publishing:

You are not held liable for a large part of the work—marketing, cover art, formatting, etc.

You are more likely to see your book in large resellers (think Chapters or Barnes and Noble), and have it reach a wider audience

You are also more likely to be given further opportunities like events, interviews, or speaker roles at festivals, and you’re more likely to win awards.

You have legitimacy and credibility as an author, especially if you have an agent, to do more books in the future and perhaps move into bigger publishing houses and make larger advances. The longer you’re in the business, the more money you make.

Cons of Trad Publishing:

It is difficult as a first-time author, and takes a long time

Some of your creative control is taken from you (you may not be able to choose your own cover or your title, etc.)

Your book must be easily marketable for them to take a chance on you

You will likely not see very much money starting out

Self Publishing

Self publishing puts all of the work that a traditional publishing house does on your shoulders. You are responsible for the editing, the formatting, designing a cover, doing your own marketing, applying for awards (if you desire), etc. This means that all creative decisions are entirely up to you, but also, that any mistakes or poor choices reflect entirely on you.

There are many ways to self publish, but lately Amazon’s publishing service seems to be the easiest for authors. In other cases, you may want to design everything and then go to a printer in your area to print off copies to then sell on your website, or try to entice resellers to pick up.

In self publishing, you may have to pay upfront for everything (especially if you hire outside services to do some of the work for you), which can make it an expensive and risky endeavor. However, you also get all of the money from sales.

Pros of Self publishing:

You are fully in control of the final product

You can publish a book that others may not have seen potential in

You don’t have to share your profit with anyone, you may see more money starting off than a trad author

It takes less time

Cons of Self Publishing:

Your reach to audience is as much as you are able to market yourself (if you have a high social media following, you will sell more than if you don’t)

All of the work is up to you, which can be difficult and frustrating, especially in getting resellers

You may not be given the same sort of opportunities as trad authors

On that note, if you ever want to make the jump to trad publishing, self published manuscripts are sometimes not seen as incredibly legitimate or credible unless they sell amazingly well

Hybrid Publishing

This form of publishing takes the idea of self publishing, but hires out some of the work. For example, you may hire a publicity company to do your marketing for you, a graphic designer to make your cover, and an editor to do a proofread, and handle the rest of it yourself. If you desire, you can technically hire out basically every service needed. This can be somewhat of the best of both worlds between trad/self publishing, however, it’s also the most expensive.

Pros of Hybrid:

You still have a majority of creative control given you are paying the companies to do what you want

A professional can take on some of the tasks that you are not as confident or skilled in

Cons of Hybrid:

It is expensive—unlike trad publishing, these companies will expect you to pay them upfront for their services, so you are risking not making back the money when your book is ready to sell

You may have to manage a lot of different people and companies—it requires intense organization and deadlines!

On that note, it is also up to you to determine if a company is credible and does good work—just getting any professional is not a guarantee that the work will be high quality

If you have any more questions about publishing, feel free to leave them in my inbox! :-)

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[novlr]

How to create a Copyright for my fiction novel?

For example:

All right reserved. This is a work of fiction...

(I forgot all of it)

In August we wrote a beginners guide to copyright, in which we talk about whether you need it, how to get it if you do, and what information you should include in a copyright page. We've even given you a downloadable template that you can customise to your needs for both fiction, and non-fiction books! Click the link below.

[saintmachina]

Listen, you're going to lift your blorbos (archetypes) and your brainrot (motifs and tropes) from fandom and wedge them into your WIP whether you like it or not. It's just going to happen.

The trick is marinating and workshopping those lifted elements until only you can see the seams. Teasing out what exactly compels you about them and then engaging in deep conversation with those elements.

Nothing new under the sun! All art is imitation! Every story has its origin point in another story! And that's fine, actually.

But a great writer knows how to imitate intentionally and with discretion and restraint, all while overlaying their own unique perspective and gifts.

[clairelsonao3]

Any Writers tried BookTok?

As some of you know, at some point in the New Year, I plan to self-publish a romance ebook. Over the next few months, I hope to start putting some more infrastructure in place to promote it for when the time comes to send out arcs, etc. I already have friends and supporters on Tumblr and A03, which is a great start. But of course, everyone says BookTok is the place to be, especially for romance writers. But I'm hesitating for a few reasons, which are:

Will I get canceled? To make a long story short, the book deals with topics that are not only dark but could be seen as controversial -- and are liable to be attacked by people who don't care that the book is the exact opposite of what they think it is and simply like canceling things based on certain phrases in titles, blurbs or loglines. Tumblr and Ao3, with a few unfortunate exceptions, have been mostly, blissfully free of these people, but BookTok strikes me as someplace that might have a lot of them. Idk, maybe I'm wrong. And if someone does try to cancel me, will I be able to handle it by simply refusing to engage?

I don't want to and can't really show my face for mostly professional reasons. (I like my face just fine, just not for TikTok!) I can use my own voice and, like, my hands or, something, but face is a no-go. Will I be severely hurting my chances of getting any eyeballs on my posts?

Is the culture toxic or likely to harm my mental health? No amount of promotion is worth something that's going to traumatize or hurt me (see above about cancellation). And if my work and/or my characters are hurt, I'm hurt. I've encountered toxicity on social media before and have largely stepped away from it, with Tumblr being the main exception because the community here is so wonderful.

Will it be too much of a time commitment? I know they suggest posting once a day, which seems like a lot, especially if it involves creating and editing original posts. And really anything that's going to take more than, say, 20 minutes out of my day (unless of course I really enjoy it, like I do Tumblr) is too much of a time commitment, in my opinion.

So, that said, I would love to hear from anyone who has experience with BookTok, especially writers of romance and ESPECIALLY writers of "dark," edgy, and/or controversial romance. Should I just try it for, say, a few weeks and see how I like it? (I have never used TikTok before, ever, so it would mostly just be getting a feel for it). Is that even possible?

Thank you for any opinions, anecdotes, or nuggets of wisdom anyone can offer!

[at-thezenith]

acquiring a manuscript - the agent and editor

hello, it's me, your favourite publishing student. let's talk acquisition.

so you've managed to secure an agent with your manuscript. then what?

most agents will do a developmental edit on first deciding to work with you. plot, character, pace, continuity and worldbuilding all come under this. what makes a good agent (and editor) is whether they are offering you suggestions on what to do instead of outright rewriting your work.

once you've made those changes (or gone back and forth depending on how much you do or don't want to make that change), your agent will send your manuscript to editors in publishing houses.

a key question on their mind is: can i sell this book? agents (and editors, but i'm getting to that) look at a book's merit, and they look at what they can compare it to. you need some sort of USP (unique selling point)

is it pride and prejudice but trans? most ardently by gabe cole novoa. is it black mirror in south east asia? red dust , white snow by pan huiting. (highly rec both, btw)

key note here - if you are submitting to a publishing house that accepts unsolicited manuscripts, you will skip straight to this next step.

your manuscript will land on an editor's desk, along with the pitch your agent has given them, usually tailored to that editor's or that house's tastes. in a big house, that editor will usually pass that manuscript to an assistant, to do a reader's report, in which the assistant will sum up the plot, point out strengths and weaknesses, and most importantly, tell them whether it is worth publishing. some manuscripts don't make it past this step, and in that case, the agent will send it to another house.

if the editor likes the sound of this manuscript, they will then read it. usually, they will read it three times: one for first glance edits, two for developmental edits, and three for line edits (line by line, spelling/grammar, vocabulary, etc). once this is done, they will tell the agent that they plan to put their house in the running for acquisition. then comes the acquisition meeting.

the acquisition meeting is where your editor will fight to get the publishing house on board with your book. remember that USP? here's where that comes into play. your editor needs, above all else, to get sales and marketing on board. how can i sell this book? editors often ask other members of the meeting to read the book beforehand to have some support, and to point to the book's readability.

the literary qualities of the book certainly come into play, but what sales and marketing want to hear is how your book is both familiar and new. so your editor will construct a pitch that both highlights the excitement of your book, but also point to previous successes with books like yours. i know that comparing books to other books is tedious, but sales are notoriously pessimistic. they control the money, after all.

but your book makes it through the meeting, and you have the whole team on board. now comes the editorial letter. this is where the editor is going to do their best to sweet talk you (and your agent) into accepting their offer of publishing your book. however, they will both gush about your work, and tell you the edits they want you to make to it, from the big developmental changes all the way down to the way a character moves in a scene. don't be discouraged if the list of changes is long; if the editor didn't want to publish the book, it wouldn't have made it past their assistant.

this of course is assuming you decide to accept their offer immediately. you could have offers from other houses, and in that case you usually won't receive the editorial letter - or at least, not in such great depth - until you have signed a contract with the house of your choice. that is more complicated.

hope you found this useful! my dms are open if anyone has any questions :)

[veronicaleighauthor]

[indigoisaspookyghost]

Does anyone have advice on how to advertise a book? I’m acting as my grandfathers unofficial publicist because I know how to work the magic google machine and generally the internet. He’s finishing up his first novel and it’s quite good imo, although maybe a little niche. Can’t advertise it online on MY social media platforms because. his legal name is the author. easily traced to me. (It’s not published yet, but he’s working on it)

[plaidjazara]

If you are not good at social media but want to sell things on the internet you need to hire a social media manager. or take a course from one.

Being not great at social media should not disqualify people from success, but it does.

Please do not let it disqualify yourself

I am a novel editor and we are being discouraged from even contracting any author who does not already have a social media plan when they are looking for publishers. It's unfortunately not something that you can ignore.

[authorlaurawinter]

I'm getting close to publishing the first book in my Nora & Sebastian series. All the "expert advice" says I should make a facebook page. Is it really worth it to do that when I don't have any kind of fanbase?

A Facebook page for the author name is actually a good idea. Even if you don’t use it, claiming it is great so no one else does or tries to play it off as being you. Also, having that for connection to other meta platforms can be useful for scheduling content. It can also be useful to use that page to join groups and such where you can promote your book and interact with others to get people curious.

I have an author page simply to claim it and cross post, but I do not actively use it except for big announcements. My genre (romantasy) tends to hang out on Bookstagram.

As for a series page, I don’t think it’s necessary. It’s just one more thing you have to pay attention to.

[tlbodine]

Some thoughts and musings on my first vendor table at a convention.

[filmcourage]

I've Written 7 Books... Here's Why I've Never Self Published - Chip Jacobs

Watch the video interview on Youtube here.

[saintmachina]

curious to know your thoughts on writing fanfic while being a professional writer? would you recommend doing so or is that just legal trouble waiting to happen?

Hey anon! What a wonderful Q! Let's get into it, with the caveat that this is just one author's opinion. However, I have worked as an agent, author, and audiobook acquisitions girlie, so I have a bit of perspective!

Listen, fic is every artist's God-given right. We should all be allowed to play in the creative sandbox with the blorbos that capture our hearts and the motifs that haunt our dreams. Many published authors, traditional and indie, still write fic from time to time. I certainly do!

One of my favorite ways to decompress between projects is to write my beloved Rhaenyra/Alicent doomed dragon lesbians fic, or to whip up a one-shot about whatever media I've been consuming lately. Sometimes I'll challenge myself to do a little drabble about whatever book I just finished reading, just to keep myself in conversation with the themes and to try out new styles or POVs. It's fun, it's challenging, it's a social activity, and it makes you a better writer! No lose situation.

The real question here is whether you share your fic handle with the general public. Most authors don't, although some, like the inimitable astolat (AKA Naomi Novik, co-founder of A03!) do. For many of us, we keep our handles private not out of shame, but so we have a place to play and experiment as a lover of fiction and member of a fandom, not as a Professional putting forward additions to their Body of Work. Also, fic is where you are allowed to get weird with it. If I want to write a ~problematic~ ship or explore a strange storyline in fic, I can do that without it reflecting on my oeuvre as a public figure, and that's nice!

Legal trouble comes into play when you read fic about your own published work. I am aware that there is A DOWRY OF BLOOD fanfiction published to A03, which delights me to no end. However, I don't read it because a.) it's not my business and fans deserve a space to play without me reading over their shoulder and b.) if I were to write a sequel with the same characters (nothing planned like that, don't get excited my beloved bats) and I lifted a fic writer's storyline, that would obviously be nasty and bad, and I could get sued. So, as a blanket rule, I don't read fic featuring my characters.

Hopefully that answered your question! Happy to go more in depth but the tl;dr is: fic away! Just be a good internet citizen and resist the urge to read fic about your own characters, if you are ever so fortunate to be in that position.

[totallyboatless]

I saw a tweet screenshot about how authors shouldn't have to be influencers to get published, and I almost reblogged but I don't want to be That Person on someone else's post.

And listen, I get what's being said - but I've worked in some version of marketing/PR within traditional publishing for over six years, and it's *so much more complicated than this take* in a way that makes me actually a little irritated. The short version is: we need to dissect the word "influencer" because it's come to mean a lot of very, very different things.

So plug: I have a newsletter with my best friend (who works in editorial) to try and help give some advice to aspiring authors. It goes out every two weeks and alternates between writing/editorial and marketing advice. I'm going to write about this topic for sure. I'm revved up enough that I kind of want to change the topic I have planned for next week lol

[at-thezenith]

would anyone be interested in me sharing my notes and talks i've attended as part of my publishing degree? i think a lot of it would help people trying to get published. of course i would write them up nicely and they would be free to access! i just went to a conference for young publishers in the uk this past week and it was so interesting and helpful :)

rb for a larger sample size and so as many people as possible can get access to the info!!

[artisimpossible]

I asked a while back what y'all would want to see if I made a Patreon and a bunch of people said writing/publishing advice, so good news, my Patreon is now up, and if you have any writing/publishing questions you'd like answered, you can comment on this post to ask!

It is *free* to leave a comment, but you must first subscribe, which, again, is free!