Both in my position as erstwhile professor and in my true vocation as a writer, I have come to realize that understanding the publishing world is essential to becoming a published writer. Those of us write because we “can do no other,” but if we want to be read we have to play the game.
There are hundreds of publishers out there. The internet has led to a proliferation of presses, mostly small and of limited distribution. They can easily get your book on Amazon, but with millions of books already there, getting it noticed is difficult.
Once upon a time there were a couple dozen major publishers. They have been bought out by one another until now there are only the “Big Five,” until recently the “Big Six”: Random House (which recently acquired Penguin, one of the six), Macmillan, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon and Schuster. You cannot get published by any of the big five without an agent.
Smaller, independent publishing houses (Indies) will often look at material without an agent’s intervention, but they are swamped with submissions and often, at least in my experience, they will neither acknowledge receipt of your materials nor will they bother to send you a letter rejecting it.
It used to be that “simultaneous submission” was a mark of bad taste: you should send your book to one company only and politely wait for their rejection, then start all over again. Now, however, such a process is a sure way to lead to disaster. You can submit to multiple places simultaneously. Just be sure to inform the others once your book has been accepted somewhere.
And, of course, self-publishing represents an option. Famous writers, like Mark Twain, sometimes had to pay to be published. Self-publishing today is easy, but success at it is hard. You need to be prepared to promote your book because nobody else will do it for you.
Amazon has easy self-publishing templates. The down-side of this is that many, many people now publish books that should never have seen the light of the web. There is nothing to stop you from publishing good or dreadful work.
Most of us find getting published at all a challenge. Great success stories have come from those who’ve persisted, however. If you’ve got something to say, and a bit of talent, you might even eventually reach one of the big five. Until then, keep on writing.
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