Publishing Paths & Decisions

It can be incredibly difficult to impress a book agent, and you pretty much need an agent to get your work read at a large established publisher. If you’ve already published a book or two, it can be extra frustrating when they still won’t give you the time of day.

One of the reasons many writers focus on Big Five book publishers and their top-level agent compadres is that it seems like their best chance for “making it big” as an author. They dream of hitting a bestseller list like the New York Times’, or otherwise selling huge numbers of books, both things the largest publishers excel at.

But you wanna know a secret?

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It’s always a privilege to be asked to contribute a guest post to great blog! The Writer’s Ally editor Harrison Demchick recently penned “The Bird and the Biscuit: Playing by the Rules,” for author Shannon O’Donnell’s blog, Book Dreaming. In this article, Harrison shares the dangers of including even one little snippet of illogic in your story. He warns that even if you tell a fantastic tale, readers will always be distracted by details, small as they may be, that don’t fully jibe with the rules of logic you’ve established for your story. When you read his post, you’ll find how he helped resolve a flawed series of events involving a bird and a biscuit for one of his clients.

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I often speak at writers’ conferences where I listen to many would-be authors gripe about how much hard work it takes to find a literary agent to represent one’s book. I don’t know that I’d say finding an agent is hard work—after all, you’re not doing any heavy lifting or even breaking a sweat (though you might if you’re a particularly anxious mailbox stalker). It’s more like time-consuming and soul-crushing work! Pursuing a publishing deal is not for the thin-skinned: Stories about big name authors who submitted to as many as 100 agents before finding one and getting a book deal abound. You’ve got to be in it for the long haul.

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What’s the key to a successful self-published book? Great writing, of course, is one—but as career coach Amy Van Court of Possibilities Unlimited attests, lots of research on self-publishing and collaborating with a knowledgeable team of experts are the keys that unlock the doors to getting recognized and generating sales.

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Has it been a while since you worked on your book? Don’t beat yourself up about it! The distance you’ve gained since the last time you sat down with this material is very valuable in giving you a fresh perspective. When you let a project sit a while (at least a couple of months) before coming back to it, you end up in a kind of creative grey area. You’ll never be completely objective about your own work, of course, but time can help you separate yourself from the work mentally and emotionally. You’ll be a lot more objective now than when you were right in the thick of things—it can be easy to lose sight of the proverbial forest for the trees when you’re immersed in a work.

Now that some time has passed, you can return to it with renewed vigor and insight—sometimes you’ll be pleasantly surprised by your own brilliance, and at other times, you’ll be embarrassed by how bad a passage is! You’ll catch errors you never noticed before, and you’ll be better able to match your progress to your original concept or outline. Here are some tips to help you take advantage of this unique vantage point.

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