With the advent of self-publishing, the world of creative writing suddenly opened up to more people. These days anybody can write a book and publish it, but the fact that the market is so full also means that your odds of making it big are diminutive. Fortunately, there are a few schools of thought on ways to improve your chance at success. You could write the greatest book ever written, but you were going to do that anyways, right? Alternatively you could build up an online personality, acquire millions of fans, and then unveil to the unsuspecting masses that you have been writing a novel all along. Surely each and every one of your adoring fans will buy a copy of your book. But let’s be honest, you’re writing a book; you aren’t the kind of person that wants to deal with that many people. So you go with the last route: traditional publishing. However, getting published at one of the Big Five Publishers (Hachette Livre, HarperCollins, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster) is no mean feat. So here’s a handy guide to get you through it. 

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Step 1: Write the best damn book ever. 

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From what I’ve read, this is the easiest part of the journey towards traditional publishing. At this point, it’s only you and the keyboard, and no one else needs to know what’s going on in that Word document. The best advice here: persevere because this step is also the biggest barrier to entry, as the majority of people never get past this stage. So if you make it here: Great! Keep up the good work and prepare for the hard part. Once you have finished your masterpiece, go back through and fix it. Then do that again and again. At some point you’ll realize you’ve trapped yourself in the hell that is revision and you haven’t actually done anything important with the story in the last few rounds of editing. This is when you should stop revising and try to find an agent. 

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Step 2: Find an agent.

 

The first step to finding an agent is research. Find authors that write books similar to your book and then figure out who their agents are. Then: go find them. Not in a creepy way, just go to their websites and find out where to mail your manuscript (there’s a chance they may accept you at this stage, but it doesn’t happen often). Also figure out what writing conventions they frequent. Go to those conventions and meet them. You’ll want to come up with a few different kinds of pitches: the logline, the one-paragraph pitch and the two-minute pitch. A logline is a brief sentence about your book to get the agent’s attention. “Dirty Harry Potter” is Jim Butcher’s logline for his best selling Urban Fantasy series The Dresden Files. If this catches the agent’s attention, they’ll ask for some more information; now you give them the one-paragraph pitch to fill in some of the questions they should have from your logline (this should also leave them with more questions about your work). At this point, hopefully they ask for further information, and so you’ll have a nice conversation with them and deliver your two-minute pitch. After that, they’ll ask for your manuscript (or they won’t), and you’re off to the races! (or you move on to the next agent). 

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Step 3: The races. 

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So now that you have an agent, it’s their job to find a publisher. There isn’t much you can do at this point, so just keep writing and hope that someone picks up your book. When your agent does find a publisher for you, you’ve cleared the last hurdle. Hooray! Your manuscript will go through the wringer of edits. Don’t be afraid to speak up when you find changes that won’t make the book better, but there won’t be many.

 

Once your work is done with the editing process, you’re finished! You have officially become a published author, and you can rest knowing you made a good start on your career.