What are the Different Ways to Get Published?

What are the Different Ways to Get Published?

by | Aug 14, 2019 | How to Publish, Writing | 0 comments

What are the Different Ways to Get Published? 


The two major ways to get published are self-publishing and traditional publishing. What are the differences between the two?

I will go over some general facts about these two ways of publishing in this post. However, we go more in depth in the Publishing Mastermind, part of the Writing Gym program, where we also help you figure out what is the best way for you to publish. 

Self-publishing

This is the Do-It-Yourself route. You write the book and hopefully find someone to edit your book for you. You design the cover and the interior and figure out the logistics of this process. This is the “cheap” and “easy” way. However, it becomes a lot more expensive that people anticipate. You pay for the editor, the layout, the interior, and more but end up with a book that doesn’t sell.  

In Write to Publish we don’t make any judgments on how people want to publish. Choosing a way to publish is like choosing an outfit. You have to find a way that works for you and what will make the difference for what you want to do–this is one of the things that I help people with.  We talk about your goals, how you can get there, and what makes the most sense for you given what your goals are. 

Traditional publishing

This is where you get paid for your book. The general trajectory is that you finish your book, get an agent, and the agent helps you find a publisher. You might have seen on Write to Publish many posts from clients talking about working with me to find an agent, how I get them in touch with an agent, and that I work with a whole bunch of agents and people from the publishing industry for my clients. 

One of the tricky things about traditional publishing and what most people get hung up on is that there are different tiers. It’s like going to college. Going to community college, a state college, and an Ivy League college differs in how you reach your certain goals. Similarly, there are basic publishing houses, middle ground publishing houses, and then your high-tier publishing houses. In Write to Publish, we shoot for the high-tier publishing houses. 

Why? When you publish a book traditionally through top-tier publishers, they will give you some money, publish your book, and do your marketing for you. In these top-tier publishing houses, you will get the best of everything.

Within this are the top five publishing houses: Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon and Schuster. I have relationships with editors from each of these publishing houses to get my clients the very best information for their publishing journey. 

We work with all kinds of authors who want to go either route. The Writing Gym is a great program, whether you want to self-publish or traditionally publish. The Publishing Mastermind is focused exclusively on shooting for those top 5 publishing houses, and Novel Selling U is where you work with your publishing company and editor so that your book can sell. 

I look forward to your questions, comments, and talking to you about how you want to publish and how you can get there. 

Three Must-Know Guidelines to the Writer’s Life

Three Must-Know Guidelines to the Writer’s Life

by | Dec 11, 2015 | How to Publish, How to Revise a manuscript, How to Write a Novel, Why is publishing so hard?, Writing | 2 comments

 

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Three Must-Know Guidelines to the Writer’s Life

6c42527a-57b7-47ff-85a4-aa55347e5fb21) Writing is an art. Although many writers will pay the bills with technical writing or designing social media posts, they are still artists. Art is about experiences, emotions, forms, and substance. Many people can write a grammatically correct sentence. But the writer will know that sometimes you start a sentence with a conjunction such as but because it sounds better. (See what I did there?)

The writer will spend hours agonizing over one line of dialogue or tearing through a thesaurus not looking for a word, but the right word. (See more about that here.) A true writer seeks the right adjectives to convey the reader’s or character’s feelings, and will make the reader feel exactly what emotions they are trying to share. Through painstaking nit-picking diction, that writer will show, not tell the raw human experience. (Remember, the Rules of Writing are Nothing Like the Rules of Real Life.) Great art takes time and practice to produce and writing is no exception.

2) One of the great writing adages is “write what you know.” We’ve all heard it, however, that doesn’t mean the writer can’t expand the breadth of what you know and care about. Brush up on your history for inspiration. Read the science and technology section of a newspaper to gain ideas of what the future can hold. Go to a place you’ve never been before– or even more daring talk to a stranger. Travel. Learn to dance. Weed plants out of the garden. Want your writing to be a pleasure to read? Create a piece that you loved to write.

3) The only writer you need to be is yourself. Write with your own voice. While it’s fun to try on the voices of authors we love, and different purposes have different modes, if the words on the page are not your own, then your voice is not being heard. Why would you leave your voice out of the important writing conversation? You are an important member of the banquet.

There is no correct way, no perfect way to write, to convey an idea, to express yourself. Some writers don’t use standard punctuation marks, some write in regional vernacular, some never use contractions. How you write is up to you. And how do you find your own writer’s’ voice?

You won’t know until you write.

There are many rules and tips about writing, but it’s crucial to remember some of the basics: writing is art, write what you know but learn what you can, and the only writer you can be is yourself. We’d love to have you join us for one of the upcoming writing groups or classes. I also have a few openings in our Writing Gym and I’d love to talk to you to see if we’re a good fit. What are you writing? I’d love to hear about it here.

All of the best & until next time, happy writing.
Annalisa

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