#publishing advice

Pay attention to what's on the first page of their website.

Are you immediately welcomed as a writer?

That's not always a good sign.

It might be that the press is new and still building its list of authors, so it has more to say about submissions than about the books it's published. That's not awful, but not awesome either (you may prefer to wait and let them make their beginner's mistakes on someone else's book. If the publisher finds its footing, you can always submit to them in a year or two!). Or maybe they just recently opened a new call to submissions and have that prominently announced. That's fine, but also look at when and where they post about new book releases.

A publisher should have a website that appeals to readers - with descriptions of the kinds of books they do or will publish, and ways for readers to connect like a newsletter signup option and social media links. If they have already published books: how easily can readers buy them? What do the covers look like? Do the book descriptions have any obvious typos? Do multiple books or pages on the website have errors?

No matter how proud a publisher is of how they serve authors, the main job of a publisher is to get books into reader's hands. That shouldn't be an afterthought on the website. If it takes you a few clicks to find submission guidelines, that may be a good sign. If, along the way, you spot several books to add to your to-read list, that's a great sign.

If the website seems to be downright screaming "Please let us publish you!" watch out for a catch. They might not be a vanity press, but they could be. Search "[Publisher name] scam" or "[Publisher name] legitimate" or "[Publisher name] vanity" and see what comes up. Or the business might be completely legit, just with a poorly organized website. Suggesting they're not great at selling books. Still not a good sign.

Always check the Amazon listing (and other listings) of the books from a publisher you're considering. What do the reviews say? What are the sales ranks like? What formats are the books offered in, and at what price point? Do you like the covers? Do you like how the sample is formatted, and can you spot any errors in the editing or formatting?

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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Head on over to www.gatesannai.com (or click here!) for exclusive blog posts, updates on my work, and pictures of my dog.

A few months back I wrote something and I've been wanting to publish it since then. Issue is, the story is kinda too long for a magazine/short story collection, but too short to be published on its own (a bit more than 17.000 words, technically a novellette I am told).

It's also a noir story with some slight supernatural elements so also a very specific subgenre.

I've been putting this off for months but it's high time I actually did something to try to get it published aside from sending it to places that I know won't even look at it. So I ask you:

- Does anyone know of a publication that might fit this story?

- Should I instead bite the bullet and write more so I can just publish a standalone novellette collection?

- Should I self-publish? Or just online? What platform would be good?

"And we learn the hard way how trying to engineer your way onto the list, just might be the thing that keeps you from getting there."

I'm happy the answer the ask publicly, perhaps it will be useful to other people. This is an incredibly complicated question but I will do my best. I can only give you the CliffsNotes version based on my personal experience, so I would highly encourage you to read some articles online and pick up a book on traditional publishing. (I know nothing about self publishing, a whole different game, but there are books on that too.) Another

Step One: I would highly recommend finding a writing group or critique partner. Moving from fanfic to original writing means that your readers no longer automatically know your characters and world building. Beta readers are invaluable in helping you figure out what parts of your story might be confusing readers. I found my first group on Meetup, there are many other places if you google it.

Step Two: To get traditionally published, you need a literary agent. Large and mid-sized publishers usually only accept submissions from agents. After you finish the book, you will write a query letter (which is a blurb for your book, like the back cover). You send the letter to agents, who all have different guidelines for how to send submissions. If they like are interested, they will request part or all of your book to read. If you make it past that stage, they will offer to represent you.

There are many articles online about how to write a query letter. There are also many databases of agents. Personally I like Manuscript Wish List, where many agents list what kind of books they are looking for. Instructions for how to submit to them will be on their websites.

It's wise to do a little research into literary agents. Anyone can create a website claiming to be a literary agent. The biggest sign of a scam would be an agent asking you for money. In traditional publishing, no agent or publisher will ever ask you for money, the money flows toward you not away from you.

Step Three: This step is optional. There are online contests for submitting to agents. Writing conferences have opportunities to pitch to agents (as well as useful writing advice.) If you don't have the money for conferences though, there are lots of great writing advice books at the library.

Step Four: Be patient. I had to submit a hundred queries to obtain an agent. I would recommend sending out queries in small batches, because if you don't get any requests for pages with the first ten or so, that is a sign you need to revise and improve your cover letter. It's a very competitive business.

Step Five: A literary agent will handle figuring out what publishers to submit your book to and handle the submissions. At this point you once again need to be patient. Some authors fail at the publisher submission stage, which is heartbreaking after so much work to obtain an agent. Fair warning, most authors write more than one book before getting traditionally published. My first book was unable to get published, although someday I would like to go back, improve it, and try again. My greatest advice would be persistence.

This article will be answering the following 10 questions:

1. Is a beta reader a type of editor? 2. Should I EVER pay a beta reader? 3. Do I HAVE to pay beta readers? 4. Should I pay someone who is reading entirely at their leisure? 5. Does paying a beta reader guarantee better feedback? 6. Should a beta reader identify problems? 7. Should I pay a beta reader to edit my manuscript? 8. If I can afford only one paid service, should I choose beta reading or editing? 9. Is asking for volunteer beta readers exploitative or elitist? 10. How do I know if a paid beta reading service is a scam?

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.

(originally posted on a different writing blog in March 2022)

This is NOT another post breaking down “what you can learn!” from Sanderson’s massive Kickstarter earlier this month. Well, it kind of is, but it’s the opposite of some of the others.

Buckle up, it’s unpopular opinion time.

On March 1, 2022, fantasy author Brandon Sanderson announced a Kickstarter: pledge to help him publish four standalone novels he’d secretly written during the pandemic. He and his team set a goal of one million dollars, and he estimated they would get two to four million total.

In three days, the Kickstarter had reached twenty million dollars, and it currently (as of March 27, 2022) sits at thirty-three million dollars.

The publishing world was—and still is—staggered.

In the last three weeks, I’ve seen a dozen indie authors and marketers try to break down that massive success and what lessons others can take from it for their own careers. Most of them write to various Amazon markets. Some of them made good points. One thing everyone keeps repeating is that Sanderson has made “smart career choices.” But every time, I’ve walked away from those articles shaking my head. Most of the articles seem to be missing the biggest and most important point. It's hard to talk about taking lessons from Sanderson’s marketing before you talk about lessons from his WRITING career.

A few facts:

The four novels Sanderson will be publishing with the Kickstarter money are already written. He wrote them for his wife (and because he wanted to explore new stories) during the pandemic.

He will be publishing them through his own company: Dragonsteel Books. He created the company to publish special editions of his books, carry his book swag*, and have an alternative option for people to buy his books if Amazon ever stops selling his books again.**

Sanderson has a reputation for being reliable with his book publishing. If he says he’s going to publish something, he does it, and he tries to keep fans updated as he goes.

*Book swag / book merch = special items created for fans of books. **Years ago, Amazon briefly stopped selling his books because of contract disputes. You can read more about it here.

And some facts about Sanderson himself, if you’re not familiar with his work:

His first book to be published—Elantris—came out in 2005. It was the sixth novel he wrote, and it was published by Tor. It took eighteen months for someone to read the book and then call him about it.

Before Elantris was published, he’d written thirteen novels.

He now has so many novels out that Wikipedia has a separate article for his bibliography.

He was handpicked by Robert Jordan’s wife to finish the Wheel of Time book series, and he was on the writing team for the Wheel of Time TV series.

So what were Sanderson’s “smart career choices” as a writer?

He didn’t write to market. This is going to be the most unpopular opinion of all, but hear me out, please. Sanderson tried it. Back before Elantris was published, after a lot of people told him his books weren’t being accepted because they were too long and didn’t have the popular format and tropes of the time, he tried writing to market. He’s said those were the worst novels of his writing career. So he stopped. He went back to writing what he loved. That love and passion kept him writing books that have resonated with fans for almost twenty years now. If we’re going to talk about why his fanbase loves his BOOKS so much, let's start with how much HE loves what he wrote and how much that love spills over in how he talks about his books.

He constantly pushes himself to improve. He knew from the beginning that he needed critique, and he got it. Since college, he’s been in critique groups and had alpha readers, and they keep pushing him to be better too. He himself says that some of his earlier books (yes, the published ones!) aren’t his best. He’s honest that he keeps wanting to do better and looking to improve.

When he made plans about publishing, he didn’t just think about it like a writer. He thought about it like an author. He figured out his writing pace and he tried to be consistent with that. You can talk for hours about how he finishes books and how that “makes him better than Patrick Rothfuss and George R. R. Martin,”*** but I don’t see many people talk about how Sanderson learned from them and others and FIGURED OUT what he had to do AHEAD OF TIME so he wasn’t doing that to his fans, intentionally or accidentally.

He also approached his published author career like a reader. He treated his fans like he would have wanted to be treated as a reader. He used social media to connect with them and to keep them posted. He was and still is actively involved in his fandom.

He’s given back to the community. He’s taught at university for years; he’s talked at conferences; he’s free with his advice on his writing podcast; he’s given fans advice for years at cons and book signings and through his website, and he always has a smile for his fans.

***I’m not going to discuss Rothfuss’s or Martin’s choices; I don’t know what’s going on in their lives, and I think there’s a difference between authors having a responsibility to finish a series and authors ‘owing’ fans the way their particular fans claim. This is only about Sanderson and his decisions.

THESE were his smart career choices. THESE are the reasons his books are so popular and why his Kickstarter got to twenty million in three days. Sure, finishing Wheel of Time helped get his name out there to some readers, but the majority of Sanderson’s fans don’t talk about Wheel of Time like they talk about his own books. Wheel of Time fans (some of them) talk about being grateful he finished the series, yes. But Sanderson fans talk more about Elantris, Mistborn, and the Stormlight Archive.

If we’re going to break down Sanderson’s success, we have to go back further than his marketing. We have to look at his foundation and be honest about why and how he is where he is.

If you write to market, three things sell your books:

your ads

your other marketing (but mostly your ads)

and how well you followed the recipe for that market

Whether your plot and characters are objectively well written doesn’t matter as much. (I'm not saying it doesn't matter at all.) Why? Because the recipe is what the ads sell. So if you’re good at following the recipe, readers will keep coming back after their first few from you. Not so much if you like to change recipes a lot or can’t follow one well. You might get other readers, but you won't get that particular market's readers.

I’m not dissing writing to market. If you DO mostly write to market, you won’t be able to take many lessons from Sanderson’s Kickstarter success (or his career in general) because Sanderson’s marketing isn’t what keeps his fiction selling. His writing is. His fan interaction is another huge part.

A note on consistency.

Sanderson is a prolific writer. He can sustain a publishing pace that many people can’t. I can’t, for sure. I would LOVE to be that prolific, but I’m not there, at least not right now. Being consistent doesn’t mean you have to publish every year or write every single day. It means finding what pace works for you and then being consistent with that. If that means publishing once a year, good for you. If it means once every three years, go for it.

Building a fanbase takes time. Sanderson has been publishing for almost twenty years, if you count how long the process took for Elantris. He’s been writing for twenty-five years. No one likes to hear that something they want right now takes time, but it’s the truth. Building a consistent fanbase takes time, and it does tend to take more time for indie authors than traditionally published ones.

I've worked with a lot of competitive write-to-market indie authors. I know exactly how unpopular this opinion is. But for all the authors wanting to really understand the writing craft and find the path that helps them build their own consistent career of putting out good stories, this post is for you. If you're asking “Why is Sanderson so popular that his Kickstarter reached twenty million in three days?” and wanting to know what you can learn from it . . .