so you want to publish a book? seems a great site detailing how to get a book published 
-
Welcome
to BookAndReader! We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!
Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.
So you want to publish a book?
- Thread starter Wabbit
- Start date
It was the first line of the article that spurred my comment: 'The first rule of getting a book published is to avoid writing a book. Whoa, what the hell are we talking about? Yes, it's very counterintuitive, but the main goal of anyone who wants to publish a book is to land a literary agent, before spending years writing something nobody wants to read.'
They make it sound as though it's a breeze to obtain an agent. They don't point out that it's by writing a lot, that a person learns how to write. With each book written, I believe a writer improves. I certainly think that's what happened in my case. An artist wouldn't learn how to paint by not painting. A mechanic wouldn't learn how to fix cars by not working on them. Would you trust a heart surgeon to operate on you without years of experience? Even if those first few books never sell, it's a valuable learning curve. And when you look back on them years later, you should be able to see how much you've improved.
They also don't say that agents don't usually take someone on who doesn't already have something to offer, as in a book that's already completed. The agent has to know that the writer submitting the proposal can fulfil their part of the bargain and write the book (which a lot of people think they could do, but the reality is that they couldn't). The only instance where this might not be a problem is with an author with a track record that shows they can supply the goods. An agent makes a living by selling books. By good fortune, persistence and by obviously writing something someone liked, I have acquired the services of an agent. Whether it will help sell my books waits to be seen, but it will help get my work looked at as a lot of publishers won't look at work that isn't submitted by an agent.
But before this, I wrote four other books that languish in a drawer. Do I regret writing them, thinking it was a waste of time? Hell no. I was learning.
They make it sound as though it's a breeze to obtain an agent. They don't point out that it's by writing a lot, that a person learns how to write. With each book written, I believe a writer improves. I certainly think that's what happened in my case. An artist wouldn't learn how to paint by not painting. A mechanic wouldn't learn how to fix cars by not working on them. Would you trust a heart surgeon to operate on you without years of experience? Even if those first few books never sell, it's a valuable learning curve. And when you look back on them years later, you should be able to see how much you've improved.
They also don't say that agents don't usually take someone on who doesn't already have something to offer, as in a book that's already completed. The agent has to know that the writer submitting the proposal can fulfil their part of the bargain and write the book (which a lot of people think they could do, but the reality is that they couldn't). The only instance where this might not be a problem is with an author with a track record that shows they can supply the goods. An agent makes a living by selling books. By good fortune, persistence and by obviously writing something someone liked, I have acquired the services of an agent. Whether it will help sell my books waits to be seen, but it will help get my work looked at as a lot of publishers won't look at work that isn't submitted by an agent.
But before this, I wrote four other books that languish in a drawer. Do I regret writing them, thinking it was a waste of time? Hell no. I was learning.
First Book Yard
Hello, Everybody,
I have just joined this forum, I'm absolutely new here, but I'm already amazed at finding so many bookworms like myself here! Really amazed!
And now I can see there other bookworms with similar problems to mine, with problems of writing and not only reading books!
Now, my name is Krisztina Timár, from Hungary, and I'm a first book author myself (in terms of publishing, not in writing, not at all!), which in Hungary means that I have had a hard time with publishers: without a widely-known name that could sell what I wrote, they reject your works. I see you have the same trouble in different countries as well.
But fortunately (for me, not for the others) I am not alone in my home country either: I have met several authors walking in my shoes. And when we realized our similar fates, we decided not to wait for publishers, but to publish our books ourselves, online, in a literary workshop which we called Első Kötet Műhely, or, after making an English version of the home-page, First Book Yard. What do you say to such an enterprise?
Our home-page in English is to be found at www.elsokotetmuhely.hu/_English/index_E.html.
Please come and write us your opinion! Could we help you in any way as well?
Best regards to all,
Krisztina
Hello, Everybody,
I have just joined this forum, I'm absolutely new here, but I'm already amazed at finding so many bookworms like myself here! Really amazed!
And now I can see there other bookworms with similar problems to mine, with problems of writing and not only reading books!
Now, my name is Krisztina Timár, from Hungary, and I'm a first book author myself (in terms of publishing, not in writing, not at all!), which in Hungary means that I have had a hard time with publishers: without a widely-known name that could sell what I wrote, they reject your works. I see you have the same trouble in different countries as well.
But fortunately (for me, not for the others) I am not alone in my home country either: I have met several authors walking in my shoes. And when we realized our similar fates, we decided not to wait for publishers, but to publish our books ourselves, online, in a literary workshop which we called Első Kötet Műhely, or, after making an English version of the home-page, First Book Yard. What do you say to such an enterprise?
Our home-page in English is to be found at www.elsokotetmuhely.hu/_English/index_E.html.
Please come and write us your opinion! Could we help you in any way as well?
Best regards to all,
Krisztina
Motokid
New Member
*sniffs again*
I don't know....signs up....posts once...dissappears...only post is a well thought out introduction not in the introduction part of the forum, and calls for people to visit a web site.....
*sniff...sniff sniff*
I'm still not convinced, but I'll consider your words clueless....I'd still like to know where Stewie is when I need him.....
I don't know....signs up....posts once...dissappears...only post is a well thought out introduction not in the introduction part of the forum, and calls for people to visit a web site.....
*sniff...sniff sniff*
I'm still not convinced, but I'll consider your words clueless....I'd still like to know where Stewie is when I need him.....
Miss Shelf
New Member
smells like canned meat to me!
No, I don't think what I've written is commercial advertising either, as we honestly never dreamt of selling you books in Hungarian. )) Even more honestly speaking, we hardly ever manage to sell our books WITHIN our home country, people prefer keeping their money there. So just now we started thinking of making more and more free downloads possible, so that our books could be read at last. )))
The question I put to you was really: how would you like such a PUBLISHING possibility? NOT a selling one. I can assure you that you would hardly be able to make a living from your books either, if you chose and managed to publish them. But I don't think the point in publishing is really to become rich in a fortnight.
I'm sorry if I was to be misunderstood.
)) Even more honestly speaking, we hardly ever manage to sell our books WITHIN our home country, people prefer keeping their money there. So just now we started thinking of making more and more free downloads possible, so that our books could be read at last. ))) The question I put to you was really: how would you like such a PUBLISHING possibility? NOT a selling one. I can assure you that you would hardly be able to make a living from your books either, if you chose and managed to publish them. But I don't think the point in publishing is really to become rich in a fortnight.
I'm sorry if I was to be misunderstood.
Motokid said:
You see, I never disappeared, it's just that I arrived back just now.
And I didn't write in the introduction part because I thought my post was needed here exactly, as it's not really about reading but writing.Again: I say it was my first visit here, and I apologize if I misunderstood something, or if my post was confusing.