THE DIVERSE PATHS TO PUBLICATION

By Gloria Ferris (Author of Mysteries & Crime Thrillers) 

There are four main paths for authors to follow to get published:     

                 1.    Traditional publication by one of “The Big Five” publishers

a)      Hachette (David Baldacci, J.K. Rowling, James Patterson)

b)      Harper Collins (Neil Gaiman, Lisa Jackson, Amy Tan)

c)      MacMillan (Kelley Armstrong, Louise Penny, Dan Brown, Donald Trump)

d)     Penguin Random House (Ken Follett, Danielle Steel, Diana Gabaldon)

e)      Simon & Schuster (Stephen King, Brad Thor, thriller, Mary Higgins Clark)

      Each of the Big Five have hundreds, if not thousands of authors in their stables. I’ve picked just a few names everybody will recognize. If it’s your dream to be among them, you’ll need an agent, no way around it. The Big Five will only accept agent queries. Period. Finding that agent is a whole other topic and we don’t have time to address it here, but know that it is difficult and time-consuming to land an agent. Give yourself a time limit to find one and a Plan B to move forward if the time limit passes without an agent nibble.

  

2.     Traditional publication by a smaller, independent publisher. There are thousands out there. All will have a website with information on the company, and outlining submission rules. Most do not require an agent – you submit directly to the publishing house. Before submitting, make sure the publisher is reputable. One way is to look at the publisher information on books in your genre on Amazon or other online retailers, and do some research. Make sure you only submit to publishers who handle your genre, i.e. if you’ve written a fantasy paranormal about vampires, don’t submit to a company that handles cozy mysteries. And, follow the submission guidelines to the letter. It’s difficult enough to attract the attention of an acquisition editor at a publishing house. If you don’t follow the format they request, your submission will be deleted or tossed without a word being read.

3.      “Self-publishing” or “Vanity publishing”. There are companies that offer publishing packages costing hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on the services purchased. Royalties are slim to none. Some of these companies are honest, some are unscrupulous to the extreme. Be very careful which one you choose. Do your research online. This type of publishing works well for a writer who wants to publish a personal memoir, or a family history that has limited appeal to others.

             4      Indie publishing is becoming more popular for both authors who have gone the traditional route and now want complete control over their work, and for those writers who have never been traditionally published but don’t care to wait through the agent/query/submission/rejection/more rejection/acceptance/eventual path to traditional publication which can take up to two years after acceptance and contract signing. Some indie authors do everything – design their own covers, format their own files, upload to online retailers, create branding and marketing strategies. Others outsource one or more of these steps, notably cover design, or using an aggregator to upload to all online retailers. 

There are many other components to publishing we haven’t covered such as: query letters to agents or queries to accompany submissions; contracts; advances; marketing and promotion. Writing is a business. Publishing a book, whichever path you take, is just the beginning.

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Gloria's new release mystery (#3) in the Cornwall and Redfern series is now available from Amazon and other Worldwide Book Vendors:  

Amazon.com

Amazon.ca