When I go to book events, there’s always someone (or more) who tell me they have a great idea for a story/book. They ask me how to get 
published.
Some authors insist they’d be happy to be writing—even if they didn’t get published. We write because we love to write so getting published is only part of the whole process. Still, most writers I know want to be published—if even to their family and friends!
So, how to get published?
Luckily, in the past ten years the opportunities for publication have grown—for better and worse.
- The traditional way. You hear about this a lot because the model hasn’t changed much in a hundred years. Here are the steps:
—Author completes a manuscript
—Author approaches publishers to see if they will buy the manuscript
—Author gets rejected dozens (hundreds) of times
—Author finally finds a publisher willing to pay for the property and agrees to publish it.
The major change today is that publishers became swamped with new requests so they took advantage of a screening process: the literary agent. If you want to know how to get published, the author must first get an agent wiling to try and sell the manuscript to a publisher. It’s now a two-step process.
2. Independent publishing. The model works this way:
—Author completes manuscript, edits it, formats it, and all cover images and copy are finished
—Author pays (some are free) a publishing company to take on the job
—Author and publisher complete the process of ebook, and/or print versions that become available for sale
Beyond the question of how to get published, people ask me which model is better. I’ve used both ways. There are pros and cons about each process. It depends on the money you are willing to put into the project, how much work you want to do, how entrepreneurial you are, and how much control you want.
I’ll talk more about this in the next post on how to get published.
