# How does an author get published?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [May 17, 2004, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649 "2004-05-17T19:45:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Primaflora](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Primaflora)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/21 "2004-05-19T00:12:29Z")
Marketing helps for sure. Occasionally word of mouth will get a book moving. If you’re lucky then you’ll be the author that the publishing house chucks a major marketing budget at.
If you don’t score that, then being prepared to self-promote can help. I know of one author whose self-promotion goes beyond obnoxious (she drives me NUTS) but it is definitely paying off for her in terms of sales. Doing your self promotion professionally is a must – websites need to be proofread and look good FREX.
Getting shortlisted for an award is a really good idea if you can manage it ;). You don’t need to actually win it to get major spin-off benefits. Winning it is nice but not essential.
Worry about all this stuff after you find an agent and a publisher though.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/22 "2004-05-19T01:47:00Z")
> [@Roches](#):
>
> I’ve heard that being published in other fields helps. I’m not sure if scientific journals count, but by the time my book is ready I should have at least a few published papers. Anyone know if that will mean anything?
Usually not with fiction unless there is some way to connect the two. If your a nuclear physicist and you write a hard science fiction novel about nuclear physicists, your background might get you a faster reading, but the book has to make it on its own.
> [@](#):
>
> And does anyone have any idea what makes a book sell? I think it’s primarily marketing now – so what would make a publisher decide to market a book aggressively?
Publishers have ideas about what might sell, but it’s still a crapshoot. Usually, aggressive marketing is a big help, and publishers usually aggressively market books they paid a lot to publish. So the size of the advance is a definite factor. Other than that, though, no one really knows.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/23 "2004-05-19T02:02:03Z")
> [@Roches](#):
>
> I’m not trying to be immodest or self-aggrandizing but I think there’s a small but finite probability it might be ‘special’. =)
To paraphrase a certain sig, it’s not special if you think it’s special; it’s special if an editor thinks it’s special. 🙂
But no editor will ever think that unless you send it to an editor (or agent). You can’t sell what you don’t send out.
caveat:
> [@](#):
>
> I’m really not trying to be immodest here; the Individual In Question has spent a really long time and a considerable amount of effort on this work and thinks that three to five more years of utter lack of recognition would be enough. =)
If you’ve been sending it out for three to five years and haven’t sold it yet - well, maybe it’s not all that special.
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### Author:  [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/24 "2004-05-19T02:02:50Z")
Connections help. Knowing someone who knows an agent or publisher will occationally get you someone to read a few pages, and that helps. Also, if you have a buddy who is published and capable of selling books on his own, and he edits together a bunch of short stories - his to sell it and a few other published authors, and one of yours, that helps. And having shorter works published sometimes helps.
Otherwise, giving blow jobs to publishers…that doesn’t work.
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### Author:  [@Roches](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roches)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/25 "2004-05-19T03:04:48Z")
I haven’t sent it out; it’s not done. I meant that it should be done in three to five more years. (I was also saying that three to five years ago.) ‘Utter lack of recognition’ isn’t entirely correct either; some people have read some of it, and their responses have been positive, sometimes enthusiastically so. Criticism has been mostly centered on my lonely battle to return the semicolon to its former grandeur. Currently I am receiving no recognition whatsoever, mostly because my potential audience is limited to a rather eccentric Tolkien fan who is kind of weird and thinks I’m boring.
The website idea is intriguing and probably worthwhile, but I barely have enough time to write as it is (and this message board doesn’t help). There’s a lot of supplemental material that wouldn’t be suitable for print but would be appropriate on a website. I’m concerned about security, though.
I’m sorry if I’ve kind of hijacked this thread. I normally only post in GQ but I could start a new thread in CS if that would be more appropriate.
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### Author:  [@Caffeine.addict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caffeine.addict)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/26 "2004-05-19T03:27:07Z")
Thanks for all the answers everybody. Can some people who have been published tell us how they got their book published?
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### Author:  [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/27 "2004-05-19T03:47:23Z")
> [@brujo](#):
>
> Thanks for all the answers everybody. Can some people who have been published tell us how they got their book published?
Yes. I mailed my proposal to 5 agents. Four of them asked to see the entire manuscript, and the first one I sent it to called me and asked if she could have it exclusively, so I never sent it to the others.
The agent recommended a lot of corrections which she said were “mostly cosmetic.” They were cosmetic in the sense that an extreme makeover is cosmetic . . . but I made them. She then sold the book as the first in a series to Ballantine. (This happened in January of 1998, the same weekend as my local hometown footbal team won the Super Bowl. It was definitely a “pinch me” kind of weekend.)
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### Author:  [@Roches](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roches)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/28 "2004-05-19T03:55:47Z")
Cicada: You do have to have a complete manuscript before you send proposals, right? My understanding is that you do, without exception, and that you can’t submit part of a long or serial work before the whole thing is finished. Sending an unfinished work to an agent or publisher seems too risky for both parties.
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### Author:  [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/29 "2004-05-19T05:40:31Z")
> [@Roches](#):
>
> Cicada: You do have to have a complete manuscript before you send proposals, right? My understanding is that you do, without exception, and that you can’t submit part of a long or serial work before the whole thing is finished. Sending an unfinished work to an agent or publisher seems too risky for both parties.
I had (what I thought was) a completed manuscript, absolutely finished. That’s usually the only way anybody’s going to sell their first one. After that I sold on proposals.
But now I’m working on something different, so my agent wants a much bigger piece.
Still, I know an author who had an agent representing her. She had a complete manuscript, which never sold, but her agent got her another deal, for three books, and that deal was based on a proposal for ONE book. It WAS kind of risky, but she delivered the manuscript, and the next two, and then got another deal for two more books.
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### Author:  [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/30 "2004-05-19T06:58:18Z")
I’ve heard that the non-fiction market is easier to break into than the fiction market. Is this true?
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### Author:  [@Freejooky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freejooky)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/31 "2004-05-19T07:11:21Z")
Remember that the book’s _perceived_ audience can be a major hindrance. A friend of mine has an amazing manuscript that she’s been shopping around for two years now. It’s incredibly well-written, engrossing, smart, hip, funny. In short, it’s something I’d pay money for if it were on the shelf in my local bookstore.
Her problem, however, is that while the book is entirely “literary” and really aimed at the MFA/McSweenys/Thomas Pynchon/Harper’s crowd, not a “genre fiction” book - it has purely contextual “horror” elements that cause every “literary” publisher to immediately discount it as a “horror novel.”
Yet, its decidedly smart, “literary” style cause the “genre” publishers to discount it as “not horror enough.”
A major component of the book’s appeal is that it perfectly straddles the realms of academic, highbrow fiction, while containing elemnents of modern horror unseen in “literary stuff” - yet this is the single reason it remains unpublished.
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### Author:  [@Primaflora](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Primaflora)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/32 "2004-05-19T09:46:22Z")
We got our New York agent by networking. An online acquaintance mentioned she had a friend who was one and I asked for contact details. It flowed from there.
Tonight we got an email from an editor who has been sitting on a book for a year. She wants it. She wants to see whatever else Mr P has in the way of unpublished manuscripts. Woot! It’s been a dry spell for him since we moved from NZ to Australia and he’s only sold 3 books. Even when you’ve been shortlisted for awards and received literary fellowships, it can be a challenge to keep on being published.
Now if the NY agent just comes through with some sales, my plans to be maintained in the style to which I would like to be accustomed may come off 😉
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/33 "2004-05-19T13:18:30Z")
> [@lavenderlemon](#):
>
> I’ve heard that the non-fiction market is easier to break into than the fiction market. Is this true?
Generally. More nonfiction is published, so it’s easier to find a market.
I got an agent by meeting him at a science fiction convention. I had already begin marketing my novel; he took it from there and sold it.
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### Author:  [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2004, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-an-author-get-published/245649/34 "2004-05-19T13:31:56Z")
Lot of good information here. I wonder how many unpublished writers we got here on the SDMB. Makes me want to get off the Internet and back to work on my alleged novel.
RealityChuck – I was wondering; is your sig line from the movie _Hearts of the West_?
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