PUBLISHING: The Traditional Route

I was privileged to be contacted recently by a young author who asked me a myriad of excellent questions and gave me some great ideas for blog posts. He has finished his manuscript and is wondering what to do next. He seemed to think my answers were helpful, so I thought it might be fun to post some of those answers here on the blog, in case anyone else out there is in his same position and is struggling to decide what to do next with his/her authorly aspirations.

You are an aspiring author, and you have completed your precious manuscript. What should you do now?

First of all, you have completed a novel. Congratulations! That is no mean feat. If you wish for the world to read your manuscript, there are two options before you. (Ok, there are probably more than that, but for simplicity and time's sake, I'm going to break it down to 2).

1. You can try to get a traditional publisher to take your manuscript:

Unfortunately, when it comes to traditional publishing, I can't really give you a whole lot of advice. I can recommend that you buy a copy of the latest year's "Guide to Literary Agents" and start combing it for agents who are currently accepting manuscripts in your genre. This is a very useful book, as agents and publishing companies tend to go in and out of business, and in any given year they may be either completely open to unsolicited queries, or they may be closed to them... so knowing in advance if they are willing to even read your query is very helpful!

This book will also guide you through what a query letter should look like, what elements it should contain, what a synopsis is, and many more useful bits of advice for the young author embarking on the quest of publication.

I sort of tried to go the traditional route at first, but after writing and mailing 20-ish query letters and only hearing back from 3 or 4 agents (I did get a request from one for more pages of my ms, but that was followed by a note saying it was "not what she was hoping for"), I decided that if I could only spend the rest of my life writing one thing: query letters or more novels... I knew which one I wanted it to be!

Tune in tomorrow to find out what the 2nd option before you is (I'm sure most of you have already guessed).

Have you tried the traditional-publishing route? What is your story? Did you find an agent/publisher? What is it like to traditionally publish? Or, do you have a particularly entertaining rejection letter to share? Leave me a comment! I'd love to hear from any authors more experienced in this option than me!