Writing A book?

[camby]

Well basicly I have started writing a book, now I dont want to say anything about it just yet but I was wondering what sort of stuff I would need to know.

How long should it be minimum
Publishers

and anything else anyone can think about realy.
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VFR400 NC24 & YBR 125

[colin1]

post the first page of it here so we can er... slate it

id love to be helpful but dont know enough about getting stuff published

i do know you can publish it yourself at your cost and then get shops to have it in their windows and you get the proceeds
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colin1 is officially faster than god

[TOM M]

[Silver]

I started this several years ago, so here's what I learnt:

Firstly, you don't go direct to a publisher as they won't give you the time of day. You need an Agent and he'll do that for you.

Obviously book lengths vary but (from memory) I was aiming for around 100,000 words as a minimum. Once you have a decent amount written (say 20,000-30,000 words), write a synopsis and then spam every literary agent you can find.

I did this (pre-bloody internet being acceptable when you had to print stuff out! ), and there were a couple of hundred I found (from memory). Most will not respond. Some will respond saying that they specialise in theatre (but thanks for the sci-fi/horror effort anyway), and if you're lucky you may get some positive response. I got plenty of letters explaining that the market place was extremely competitive and very difficult to break into etc. I did have three agents come back to me to say that they were interested in representing me. What they asked for next was the finished document... which I didn't have at the time (and still don't! D'oh!).

I guess from there they'd take a view on the overall piece and, if they like it, agree some terms with you before approaching publishers who they have contacts with and who they feel will be receptive to the type of book.

Hope that helps.

[camby]

Cheers mate, yeah im not realy going to post it yet as its still in the early stages and due to the book itself it wont be finnnished for some time.

But Il keep what you said about the agents in mind and once the book is nearing completion I will go spamming
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VFR400 NC24 & YBR 125

[Finglonga]

[Silver]

That's what spell checker, and an editor are for!

[camby]

I do know how to spell, just don't focus when im on the forum, plus as silver said they dont give you spell checker for nothing
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VFR400 NC24 & YBR 125

[hellkat]

There are some very interesting self-publishing websites around the place, where you can upload the finished product and create your own artwork (or get a more arty bod to do it) ... you can put your own price on the book, and you apply for your own ISBN number etc, and you can do as much (or as little) marketing as you like, although they are quite well marketed from the websites' own listings, in that they are wellknown websites. I am thinking in particular of lulu.com and cafepress.com ...

HOWEVER ...

... sounds like you are a bit TOO new to this writing lark to actually produce a respectable volume yourself. I'm not being critical here, but you do need to ensure that the book, once written is well edited and grammatical, stuff like that which really only editors and publishers know how best to do.

So stick to the traditional route for now, which is EXTREMELY tiresome, and all budding authors go through it ... of sending off a precis* of your book to agents or publishers. Some publishers will accept unsolicited manuscripts, but not many, so do your homework and check to be sure they do. Read as much as you can in the library about submitting manuscripts.

To even get onto a publisher's slush pile is an achievement, and from there, you have to convince them you've really got something INTERESTING for them.

VERY useful books to buy and read are The Writers and Artists Yearbook and Writers Guide (both annual things, but you can make use of one single copy of each for quite a few years. There's also a journal called Writers Digest (I think) which is quite useful and often very interesting, but you have to subscribe to it.

Good rules to remember are:

Keep your grammar checker on as well as your spellchecker.
Don't use fancy or huge fonts. Publishers HATE them and will often reject anything that isn't printed on plain white paper and in some sensible font like Arial or Courier 10 or 12 point (maximum).
Double space the whole thing, and leave proper wide margins of at least 1.5 inches on each side.
Your dictionary/thesaurus is your friend.


Oh dear, better stop there. I could go on for hours, LOL. All I can say is : read about writing - as much as you write whatever you are writing about and ...

... Good luck!




*A precis is like a concise description of what your book is about, with a short list of chapters and setting out briefly how each chapter evolves. Think like a book report but trying to "sell" it to the agent or the publisher.
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Not nearly as interesting in real life.

[techierob]