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 ...
Blog of a struggling writer.