Advice on Publishing Your Novel

From Joel Rosenberg, author of the Guardians of the Flame fantasy series (some of my favorite books as an adolescent). Found on rec.arts.sf.written, reprinted with permission. Please don't deluge Joel with e-mail until after you've followed all the steps. :-)

  1. Finish it. (Trust me on this. You'll get better responses with a great book that keeps an editor up all night.)

  2. Polish it. Make it great.

  3. Put it in proper manuscript form. (You get that from any of a number of sources; I bet there's one out on the net. To be safe, use the manuscript preparation and submission chapter in any copy of Writer's Market, which your library should have. Don't buy the book, just copy the chapter -- the rest of the advice in book, particularly the market listings, need to be filtered through experience.)

  4. Send it out, with return postage, as in WM. For a first SF/fantasy novel, I recommend that you send it to Tor. You'll find their address in any Tor book. If you'd prefer to try another publisher, look in one of their books.

  5. Wait.

  6. Wait some more.

  7. Go back to 5.

  8. If it's rejected, go back to step 4., (not 3!) and start again with another publisher.

  9. When you get an offer, email me again, and I'll tell you which decent agents -- that I know about; you should feel free to ask other people, as I don't keep track of such things pretty well -- are taking on new clients.

  10. Remember to mention me on the acknowledgments page.

  11. At some point, you'll get a letter, or an email, or a call from somebody who starts off with something like "I'm working on a novel, but I don't know what to do about selling it . . ."

    Then you get to pay forward...

Best,

jr

Click here to go to Joel's home page.
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