How Do You Publish a Book?
The main questions I have been asked all summer are “how did you get published?” and “Why did you decide to write a book?” The real answer is entirely too long to explain in passing. So today, I’m officially providing the answer in about 2,000 words.
Also, I can't tell you how you can get published. But I can tell you how I did.
So this whole process started in January of 2016, I believe. I decided to write a fantasy, because why not. I had never written it, and at this point I had basically only read Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter as far as fantasy books out on the market. None of this seemed like an issue to me.
(People ask me why I decided to write a book. I've actually been consistently writing a book since the age of 9. Just none of them have been remotely publishable.)
Since the fall of 2015 I had been toying with some new character ideas. In January, I threw them all into this scarcely-developed fantasy world that basically was medieval except with bombs. The book was called The City on a Hill. I was done by April and it capped off at like 35K words. It was literally so bad. I cannot adequately describe to you how stupid, dull, dry, far-fetched, and weak the entire storyline was.
This didn't stop me. In June 2016, after finishing book one, I started book two which was called The King of the Golden Hall. This one was even more dull. It took me six months to finish, and I almost didn't finish. I just got so bored with it. In the process, phones and radios kept sneaking in, even though this was supposed to be medieval. I created weird and stupid reasonings as to why they existed.
In December 2016, I finished it. I had all along been planning a book 3, and had an entire notebook full of ideas. But in the process of writing book 2, I realized how it and book 1 could be so immensely better. I rethought the whole world and the whole plot. It was deeper and more plausible. But instead of rewriting the first two books, I immediately started with book three, throwing aside my old notebook of ideas and making it fit with my new ideas instead of with the existing books. It was called Third Winter's War, which was my plan all along for what the third book would be titled. It was way longer and more personal than the first two disasters. I was also in a really bad time mentally when I wrote book three, and some parts were so personal I wrote them in a notebook in a totally dark room, because that was the only way I could get through it.
I started book three on December 12, 2016 and finished in May 2017. However, now I had a mess. I had a horrible book one and book two, and now a decently good book three that didn't properly follow the other two books because I had written it in a completely different direction. I also got in a hangover when I finished book three, and had trouble focusing.
I started reworking my idea of book one. I took hold of the direction book three had gone in, but threw away the rules even more so. I basically threw in whatever elements I wanted to until the book was as far away as possible from medieval. My only concern this time around was having fun. I was working in a library at this point and that was my main plot inspiration. At the library, I found The Book of Secrets by Deepak Chopra, and that gave me a lot of ideas as well as my title.
I wrote the first draft of The Book of Secrets from June 2017 to August 12, 2017. The second draft was basically written throughout the fall, as I typed and re-wrote what I had written in a notebook. After that, I didn't do anything for awhile. I put The Book of Secrets on Wattpad and it had an amazing cover that a kid in Asia made for me.
In January 2018, I had enough Wattpad readers to inspire me to rewrite book 2. The only book 2 that existed was the hot mess called King of the Golden Hall. I pulled out all the loose notebook paper and got to work rewriting it. I renamed it Warden of the West March. Weirdly enough, about half of the original book 2 was able to be reworked into the new book 2 with minimal rewriting. The other half was entirely new material. I don't know why I did this, but I wrote the entire book in notes on my phone. I don't recommend it because it resulted in so many typos. Book two, Warden of the West March, was written from January-March 2018. It was the fastest I ever wrote anything of that length; I was doing chapters a day. Tons of it was written in the car while going to and from Savannah.
As soon as I finished book 2, I got to work rewriting book 3, because I had about three people on Wattpad who were now following the series and asking for the final installment. It gave me motivation. Book 3, Third Winter's War, was not a bad book already, but needed to be totally rewritten because I had changed a lot of ideas since I first wrote it. I wrote the entire story in the "drafts" folder on Wattpad, again on my phone. And again with tons of typos. The rewrite of book 3 took from early March 2018 to April 26, 2018.
After that, I didn't know what to do with myself. I kind of got hungover again. Then in September 2018 (I think it was September but I honestly don't remember), my friend's book was accepted by a publisher. My friend was (is) younger than I am. I thought if she had success, I may as well try to become published for fun. My entire mentality throughout the publishing process was that I was just trying it for fun.
I had never, in a thousand years, written The Book of Secrets with the intent of publishing it. But it was the only publishable story I had. So I took it down from Wattpad and rewrote it. This was the third draft. I basically just polished it until I thought it was the best it could ever possibly be (HAHA little did I know...) Then it was time to submit to publishers and see what happened.
From the very start I didn't even consider self-publishing. That didn't cross my mind. I just started by finding lists of publishers who accepted unsolicited manuscripts (unsolicited means you don't have an agent). I made an agreement with myself. I would submit to every place it was possible for me to submit to. It didn't matter if I didn't like them, if I didn't think the books they produced looked professional enough, or if they weren't looking for my genre. If there was a submissions tab on the website, they got my submission. I truly believed that whatever was meant to happen would happen, I just had to work really hard and stop at nothing. If they all rejected me, then my story could go back on Wattpad and all would be restored. At the time, that was what I wanted, because I missed Wattpad, where I had friends and could stay safely hidden behind a computer screen. I was really happy with my life the way it was, but I also knew I would never been 100% content if I didn't try publishing while I had the chance.
It was an exhaustive process because every single place wanted a unique query letter, a personalized cover letter, a manuscript formatted differently. It was so time-consuming and at this point I was in school full time and also worked 25 hours a week away from home. I would get home and work on my laptop late into the night. I ended up submitting to 32 publishing houses and 3 literary agencies (agents are really hard to find so I mostly stuck with publishers). The biggest press I submitted to was Arthur A. Levine. When I say I stopped at nothing I really mean that. A website would say "We don't accept fantasy" but I would send them mine, anyway. There was also a publisher called Presbyterian & Reformed. There is no reason on planet earth why Presbyterian & Reformed should want a secular book written by a Methodist. Did I submit to them? Of course I did. I wrote a customized query letter pretending to be Presbyterian, and went on about the sovereignty of God. I was rather believable if I do say so.
Don't get me wrong though, I was focused intensely on one plan and goal: If none of the 35 wanted me, I would dig to the bottom of the Internet and find 35 more. Then I would start the process over. If I reached the literal end of possibilities, and all of them said no, then I would know it wasn't meant to be, and I would go back to my normal life in peace.
I finished submitting to "phase one" (this was what I called the first set of 35) on December 15, 2018. The process of pitching myself and submitting took three months. I happily put The Book of Secrets back on Wattpad. By this point, I was already collecting rejection letters (which are actually emails). I ended up getting 9 within the first couple of months (one of them was Presbyterian & Reformed). There was also a lot of silence.
Then I got an email from Olympia Publishing, a company in London. They basically said, "Good day! Congratulations! We'd like to offer you a contract! Please pay 3,000 pounds." I wrote back an email saying "Cheerio, go cry into your tea." I actually didn't send the email. But it was very satisfying nonetheless.
Then on New Years Eve, a company called Black Rose Writing asked if my manuscript was still available or if it had been accepted elsewhere. I told them yes, and they said they would send me a contract for consideration within a week or two. I had submitted to so many places, I didn't remember who Black Rose Writing was. I had also freshly walked away from the British scammer, so I was scoffing and my mindset was, "Let's see what scam is next."
Anyway, I got the contract sometime in January 2019 and I was really, really, really suspicious. I made everyone I know read it. I did so much Internet research. But finally, I became slowly and doubtfully convinced it was okay. They didn't want a cent from me, and I wasn't required to buy a single copy of my own book. So besides signing away book rights, I had literally nothing to lose. And if I didn't like it, I could choose not to renew the contract when the two years ended.
So on January 15, I signed the contract and started working with a team of four men from Black Rose Writing. For awhile nothing happened, except they made me take all three stories down from Wattpad. I was sad for awhile. It was the end of an era. But then in the spring we started heavily editing. It was the last time I could ever change my own piece of writing (I thought), and it really stressed me out. Also, the editing process came at a time when I was working 42 hours a week out of the house while in school full-time. I was kind of losing my mind. Also, Bitsy died two days after I got my cover, and for a long time I didn't care about the book coming out anymore. I wasn't interested in it. I no longer cared if the book ever saw the light of day or not.
In April, the art department finished the cover and the book went up for pre-order, and I think in May I finally shared the news. I had kept it a secret for a long time because I was still so doubtful about the process, and then because Bitsy died and I didn't do anything for awhile. But quite a few people found out about it by mistake, anyway. ARC copies went out to reviewers. Then we spent July (this month) revising it one more time and making the finalized copy. I had the opportunity to make some final personal changes to a couple of scenes. So basically two versions of the book exist, the ARC and then the final copy with noticeable changes.
So book one is about to be out in the world. Books two and three still need to be edited, and I have absolutely no idea if they will ever be out in the world.
A year ago, I didn't have even the slightest idea of what publishing is like, so there you have it. Also, I haven't written anything new since finishing the series, and I'm kind of afraid that was my one hurrah and now I'm all dried up.
Also, I can't tell you how you can get published. But I can tell you how I did.
So this whole process started in January of 2016, I believe. I decided to write a fantasy, because why not. I had never written it, and at this point I had basically only read Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter as far as fantasy books out on the market. None of this seemed like an issue to me.
(People ask me why I decided to write a book. I've actually been consistently writing a book since the age of 9. Just none of them have been remotely publishable.)
Since the fall of 2015 I had been toying with some new character ideas. In January, I threw them all into this scarcely-developed fantasy world that basically was medieval except with bombs. The book was called The City on a Hill. I was done by April and it capped off at like 35K words. It was literally so bad. I cannot adequately describe to you how stupid, dull, dry, far-fetched, and weak the entire storyline was.
This didn't stop me. In June 2016, after finishing book one, I started book two which was called The King of the Golden Hall. This one was even more dull. It took me six months to finish, and I almost didn't finish. I just got so bored with it. In the process, phones and radios kept sneaking in, even though this was supposed to be medieval. I created weird and stupid reasonings as to why they existed.
In December 2016, I finished it. I had all along been planning a book 3, and had an entire notebook full of ideas. But in the process of writing book 2, I realized how it and book 1 could be so immensely better. I rethought the whole world and the whole plot. It was deeper and more plausible. But instead of rewriting the first two books, I immediately started with book three, throwing aside my old notebook of ideas and making it fit with my new ideas instead of with the existing books. It was called Third Winter's War, which was my plan all along for what the third book would be titled. It was way longer and more personal than the first two disasters. I was also in a really bad time mentally when I wrote book three, and some parts were so personal I wrote them in a notebook in a totally dark room, because that was the only way I could get through it.
I started book three on December 12, 2016 and finished in May 2017. However, now I had a mess. I had a horrible book one and book two, and now a decently good book three that didn't properly follow the other two books because I had written it in a completely different direction. I also got in a hangover when I finished book three, and had trouble focusing.
I started reworking my idea of book one. I took hold of the direction book three had gone in, but threw away the rules even more so. I basically threw in whatever elements I wanted to until the book was as far away as possible from medieval. My only concern this time around was having fun. I was working in a library at this point and that was my main plot inspiration. At the library, I found The Book of Secrets by Deepak Chopra, and that gave me a lot of ideas as well as my title.
I wrote the first draft of The Book of Secrets from June 2017 to August 12, 2017. The second draft was basically written throughout the fall, as I typed and re-wrote what I had written in a notebook. After that, I didn't do anything for awhile. I put The Book of Secrets on Wattpad and it had an amazing cover that a kid in Asia made for me.
In January 2018, I had enough Wattpad readers to inspire me to rewrite book 2. The only book 2 that existed was the hot mess called King of the Golden Hall. I pulled out all the loose notebook paper and got to work rewriting it. I renamed it Warden of the West March. Weirdly enough, about half of the original book 2 was able to be reworked into the new book 2 with minimal rewriting. The other half was entirely new material. I don't know why I did this, but I wrote the entire book in notes on my phone. I don't recommend it because it resulted in so many typos. Book two, Warden of the West March, was written from January-March 2018. It was the fastest I ever wrote anything of that length; I was doing chapters a day. Tons of it was written in the car while going to and from Savannah.
As soon as I finished book 2, I got to work rewriting book 3, because I had about three people on Wattpad who were now following the series and asking for the final installment. It gave me motivation. Book 3, Third Winter's War, was not a bad book already, but needed to be totally rewritten because I had changed a lot of ideas since I first wrote it. I wrote the entire story in the "drafts" folder on Wattpad, again on my phone. And again with tons of typos. The rewrite of book 3 took from early March 2018 to April 26, 2018.
After that, I didn't know what to do with myself. I kind of got hungover again. Then in September 2018 (I think it was September but I honestly don't remember), my friend's book was accepted by a publisher. My friend was (is) younger than I am. I thought if she had success, I may as well try to become published for fun. My entire mentality throughout the publishing process was that I was just trying it for fun.
I had never, in a thousand years, written The Book of Secrets with the intent of publishing it. But it was the only publishable story I had. So I took it down from Wattpad and rewrote it. This was the third draft. I basically just polished it until I thought it was the best it could ever possibly be (HAHA little did I know...) Then it was time to submit to publishers and see what happened.
From the very start I didn't even consider self-publishing. That didn't cross my mind. I just started by finding lists of publishers who accepted unsolicited manuscripts (unsolicited means you don't have an agent). I made an agreement with myself. I would submit to every place it was possible for me to submit to. It didn't matter if I didn't like them, if I didn't think the books they produced looked professional enough, or if they weren't looking for my genre. If there was a submissions tab on the website, they got my submission. I truly believed that whatever was meant to happen would happen, I just had to work really hard and stop at nothing. If they all rejected me, then my story could go back on Wattpad and all would be restored. At the time, that was what I wanted, because I missed Wattpad, where I had friends and could stay safely hidden behind a computer screen. I was really happy with my life the way it was, but I also knew I would never been 100% content if I didn't try publishing while I had the chance.
It was an exhaustive process because every single place wanted a unique query letter, a personalized cover letter, a manuscript formatted differently. It was so time-consuming and at this point I was in school full time and also worked 25 hours a week away from home. I would get home and work on my laptop late into the night. I ended up submitting to 32 publishing houses and 3 literary agencies (agents are really hard to find so I mostly stuck with publishers). The biggest press I submitted to was Arthur A. Levine. When I say I stopped at nothing I really mean that. A website would say "We don't accept fantasy" but I would send them mine, anyway. There was also a publisher called Presbyterian & Reformed. There is no reason on planet earth why Presbyterian & Reformed should want a secular book written by a Methodist. Did I submit to them? Of course I did. I wrote a customized query letter pretending to be Presbyterian, and went on about the sovereignty of God. I was rather believable if I do say so.
Don't get me wrong though, I was focused intensely on one plan and goal: If none of the 35 wanted me, I would dig to the bottom of the Internet and find 35 more. Then I would start the process over. If I reached the literal end of possibilities, and all of them said no, then I would know it wasn't meant to be, and I would go back to my normal life in peace.
I finished submitting to "phase one" (this was what I called the first set of 35) on December 15, 2018. The process of pitching myself and submitting took three months. I happily put The Book of Secrets back on Wattpad. By this point, I was already collecting rejection letters (which are actually emails). I ended up getting 9 within the first couple of months (one of them was Presbyterian & Reformed). There was also a lot of silence.
Then I got an email from Olympia Publishing, a company in London. They basically said, "Good day! Congratulations! We'd like to offer you a contract! Please pay 3,000 pounds." I wrote back an email saying "Cheerio, go cry into your tea." I actually didn't send the email. But it was very satisfying nonetheless.
Then on New Years Eve, a company called Black Rose Writing asked if my manuscript was still available or if it had been accepted elsewhere. I told them yes, and they said they would send me a contract for consideration within a week or two. I had submitted to so many places, I didn't remember who Black Rose Writing was. I had also freshly walked away from the British scammer, so I was scoffing and my mindset was, "Let's see what scam is next."
Anyway, I got the contract sometime in January 2019 and I was really, really, really suspicious. I made everyone I know read it. I did so much Internet research. But finally, I became slowly and doubtfully convinced it was okay. They didn't want a cent from me, and I wasn't required to buy a single copy of my own book. So besides signing away book rights, I had literally nothing to lose. And if I didn't like it, I could choose not to renew the contract when the two years ended.
So on January 15, I signed the contract and started working with a team of four men from Black Rose Writing. For awhile nothing happened, except they made me take all three stories down from Wattpad. I was sad for awhile. It was the end of an era. But then in the spring we started heavily editing. It was the last time I could ever change my own piece of writing (I thought), and it really stressed me out. Also, the editing process came at a time when I was working 42 hours a week out of the house while in school full-time. I was kind of losing my mind. Also, Bitsy died two days after I got my cover, and for a long time I didn't care about the book coming out anymore. I wasn't interested in it. I no longer cared if the book ever saw the light of day or not.
In April, the art department finished the cover and the book went up for pre-order, and I think in May I finally shared the news. I had kept it a secret for a long time because I was still so doubtful about the process, and then because Bitsy died and I didn't do anything for awhile. But quite a few people found out about it by mistake, anyway. ARC copies went out to reviewers. Then we spent July (this month) revising it one more time and making the finalized copy. I had the opportunity to make some final personal changes to a couple of scenes. So basically two versions of the book exist, the ARC and then the final copy with noticeable changes.
So book one is about to be out in the world. Books two and three still need to be edited, and I have absolutely no idea if they will ever be out in the world.
A year ago, I didn't have even the slightest idea of what publishing is like, so there you have it. Also, I haven't written anything new since finishing the series, and I'm kind of afraid that was my one hurrah and now I'm all dried up.
Comments
Post a Comment