The hardest part of getting a book published is the
actual writing. All it takes to see this is the number of people who
dream of publishing a book but never manage to hammer out a rough draft.
I spent 20 years trying to write my first novel before I finally pulled
it off. It’s not unusual for an aspiring writer to struggle for years
and never produce a finished product to submit to agents or editors.
Once
the hard part is done and a draft is written, there are two basic
routes a writer can take. Much ink has been spilled over the past few
years about the rise of self-publishing—even though the route predates
Mark Twain and Benjamin Franklin. To self-publish requires hiring cover
artists, editors, and typesetters or learning to do these things on
one’s own. The difficult task of emailing a cover artist to hire her
services is often used to frighten authors away from self-publishing.
That’s because there’s a myth that authors are lazy, and a myth that
some authors merely write for a living. No such creature has ever
existed.
The alternative to self-publishing is to sign over your work to a
traditional press. It sources the cover artist, editor, and typesetter
for you. In exchange, it takes most of the income. This is sold as a
fair deal, especially since it is said that publishers support authors
while they write their novels by providing a livable advance. This is
yet another myth: authors produce their first works while working
another job; they are not given a year’s salary because they have an
idea.
Read the rest at Publishers Weekly
No comments:
Post a Comment