Thunderbirds Go Brrrrrr

What are your options for publishing a book?

The main options you'll find discussed are traditional publishing and self publishing.

Traditional Publishing: Publishing a book through a publishing house, like Simon & Schuster or Macmillan. The majority of books you see in bookstores will be traditionally published. When you traditionally publish a book, you sell the rights for it to a publisher, who then takes care of the actual publishing process for you. There are a wide variety of publishers out there, some very large and some very small.

Pros: Traditional publishing generally (though not always) gets you a bigger paycheck and gets your book in front of more people. The publisher will also pay for editing, cover design, etc—with traditional publishing, you shouldn't be expected to pay for any publishing expenses.

Cons: You often have less control over the book. It can also be very hard to get a book traditionally published—there are a lot of authors trying to publish their books and a much smaller number of books actually getting published every year. Additionally, a lot of marginalized authors struggle to get their books traditionally published, because publishers will either refuse to consider them outright or will try to say "We'll only publish you if you make your main characters straight/cis/white/monogamous/able-bodied/etc".

Self Publishing: Publishing a book yourself. While some people claim that self published books never make it into bookstores, there are actually bookstores (mostly independent ones) that carry self-published books that meet certain requirements. With self publishing, you keep all of your rights and handle the publishing process yourself. Many people just self-publish ebooks, but it is also possible to self-publish hard copies.

Pros: You retain full creative control of the book. You can publish absolutely whatever you want without needing to convince a publisher to do it. This also means that you have full freedom to publish sequels, prequels, etc, which can be hard to get a traditional publisher to agree to unless your book sold unusually well.

Cons: You have to either handle all aspects of publishing yourself or pay people to do it for you. This includes editing, cover design, managing social media, managing pre-order campaigns, laying out the book file, and of course, actually publishing it. If you're doing it all yourself, it's a lot of work, and it may not all be work you enjoy or are skilled at. If you're paying people to do it, the costs add up fast, and can easily total in the thousands by the time you're done. It can also be harder to make money and to get readers, though there are self-published authors who have done a great job at that.

While some traditionally published authors look down on self-published authors, I'm of the opinion that neither way is inherently better or worse than the other. They're both perfectly valid options for publishing a book, and it really just comes down to what works better for you, personally.

I haven't researched self publishing or nonfiction trad publishing as much, so this is going to focus on fiction trad publishing. If anyone wants to reblog with self publishing or nonfiction trad publishing resources, please do!

One last thing I want to note: many (maybe most, though I'm not 100% sure) publishers won't consider publishing a book that's been previously self-published. Others may consider it, but only under very special circumstances. If you're considering self publishing a book and then later trying to get it trad published, just keep in mind that self publishing it first could make it significantly harder (though not impossible) to get it trad published later.

How do you traditionally publish a book?

A lot of people are under the impression that to publish a book, you just mail your manuscript off to a publisher and hope they respond. These days, the process is actually a bit different. The steps to traditionally publishing a book are, generally speaking:

Write a full book (called a manuscript, sometimes abbreviated MS) and edit it to make sure it's as good as it can possibly be. Ideally, you'll also get feedback from other people on your manuscript before you send it out to make sure it's super solid

Submit your story to literary agents. The exact process for this differs by agent: some agents have you submit via a form on their website, others through a form on a website called Query Manager, and others through email. Exactly what you send will also vary by agent, but basically every agent will ask for a query letter, which you can think of as being sort of like a cover letter for your book. If an agent asks that you submit any part of your manuscript, it will generally just be a small part (e.g. first chapter, first 20 pages) rather than the entire manuscript

If any agents are interested in seeing more of your manuscript, they'll get back to you and request either a full manuscript (you send them the whole thing) or a partial manuscript (you send them part of it)

If an agent who requested to see more of your manuscript thinks that your story has publishing potential and they're interested in helping you publish it, they'll offer to represent your manuscript. Generally, you have a phone call with them at this point to go over all of the details, then wait 1-2 weeks to give them a response so you can reach out to any other agents you have active queries with and say "Hey, I just got an offer of representation, if you're interested in making your own offer, please respond by X date"

Once you have your agent, your agent may help you edit your book further or they may think it's fine as is. Once you're both happy with the book, you'll go on submission, meaning that the agent is going to reach out to editors at different publishing houses and say "Hey, I've got this book, do you wanna publish it?"

Ideally, at least one editor will make an offer, and if you agree with the terms they're offering, that's it—you're gonna be published! However, it is possible that no editors will make an offer, at which point you'll have to discuss with your agent if you want to keep trying with this book, try again with another book, or stop entirely

I will caution you now that it's very hard to get a book traditionally published. Recent surveys I've seen have put average rates of agents requesting fulls around 3-7%, depending on age range and genre. And that's not even rates for offering representation—that's just for saying "I want to read the full manuscript", which may or may not lead to an offer of rep (when I was querying SISTER OF THE SUN, three agents requested fulls, and none of them ended up offering rep).

It is also possible that you'll get an agent and get an offer to publish the book, but the offer will be conditional on terms that you don't want to agree with—I've known authors of color who got told "We'll only publish your book if you make the main character white", queer authors who got told "We'll only publish your book if you make the main character straight and cis", etc. They may also have terms that aren't necessarily bigoted but that you still don't want to agree to, like "We'll only publish your book if you remove the heist subplot" or "We'll only publish your book if you can cut 20,000 words from the manuscript".

None of this is intended to be discouraging or to say "nobody should try to get traditionally published"—I'm trying to get traditionally published right now!—but just to set expectations. Getting trad published is hard, and it takes most people a few tries before they can get a book published. Not being able to publish the first (or second, or third, or) book that you write doesn't necessarily mean you're a horrible writer who should just give up. Sometimes it takes a few tries.

I also want to be clear that, despite the warning I gave two paragraphs ago, there are marginalized authors who have successfully trad published a book without making those sacrifices. While it can be hard, it is possible, especially if you have an agent who will really champion your book.

Age Ranges

At some point before you attempt to publish your novel, you'll need to decide what age range is it. Many agents only represent certain age ranges, and will reject you immediately if you query a book in an age range they don't represent (e.g. if they only represent adult books and you try to query a middle grade novel, they'll probably auto reject you). The common age ranges are:

Board Book: A short book made of thick, durable cardboard; examples include Goodnight Moon and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?; typical reader age range is around 0-3

Picture Books: Slightly longer than board books and often printed on regular paper, but still contain illustrations on all or most pages; examples include Pete the Cat and Dr. Seuss’ books; typical reader age range is around 3-6

Chapter Books: Books that are longer than picture books and sorted into chapters, but still short and intended for young readers; examples include Junie B. Jones and Magic Tree House; typical reader age range is around 6-9

Middle Grade: Longer and more complex books intended for pre-teens; examples include Percy Jackson and Coraline; typical reader age range is around 9-13

Young Adult: Books intended for teenagers, fairly similar to adult but generally have a teenage protagonist and less mature themes; examples include The Hunger Games and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before; typical reader age range is around 13-16

Adult: Books intended for adults; examples include This is How You Lose the Time War and The Song of Achilles; typical reader age range is around 16+

There’s also a proposed category called New Adult (NA), intended for readers around the 18-24 age range and focusing on characters around the same age. Unfortunately, the publishing industry has largely not responded to attempts to get this to be widespread, and it’s still a pretty niche concept. That isn’t to say that stories don’t get published that do, arguably, fit the definition of New Adult (personally, I think that both The Locked Tomb series and The Magicians could be viewed as NA), but the authors generally have to bill them as either YA or adult. If you’re writing a book that fits the bill for NA, you’ll probably have better luck querying it if you can reasonably describe it as either YA or adult.

Final note: you may see some discussion of kidlit. This is short for "children's literature" and refers to all of the categories except adult (an author who writes exclusively YA and an author who writes exclusively picture books are both considered kidlit writers).

Publishing Resources

Finally, here are a bunch of publishing resources I've accrued over the past two years!

Writing

On Writing Emotion

Capturing Voice!

How Long Should a Book Be? (Note: Please read this; it may seem like an inconsequential thing, but having a book that's significantly longer or shorter than genre standards can actually tank your chances of getting published)

Editing & Polishing

Tightening Prose

When Should I Spell Out Numbers? | Grammarly

Final Editing Checklist

Querying

Querying (1): Step by Step Query Process

Perfect Pitch

Query Letter Length: How Long Should Your Query Letter Be?

Advice for querying authors (Twitter thread)

questions to ask an agent on The Call

The Query Simplified

Pitch Wars: The Synopsis … simplified

How to Write a Synopsis without Stressing (Video)

Jumping Back Into the Trenches (or, querying again after splitting from your agent)

Nudging Agents with an Offer of Representation

Publishing & Marketing

Book Graphics Recs

So, you got an edit letter

Book Launch Survival Guide

Resource Collections

(Other collections of links to various resources around the web)

Be Your Own Mentor

Kidlit resources (Twitter thread)

Writing Resources (collected by Rebecca F. Kuang, author of The Poppy War)

Resources for writers that everyone assumes you already know (Twitter thread)