By Jori Hanna
You’ve written “The End” on your first draft, and you’re filled with an incredible sense of accomplishment. You did it! You finished your book! You’re proud, and you should be. Of the millions of Americans who say they want to write a book, very few actually put in the work of putting words on the page. And even fewer see the book all the way to completion. When all is said and done, only around 3% of those who say they want to write a book actually end up with a published work—traditionally or through another means, like author publishing and hybrid publishing.
So now that you have a finished manuscript, what are you meant to do with it? What are the next steps to get you from writer to author? And how do you find the right path forward for your work?
Step 1: Become a Student of the Publishing Industry
Regardless of how you want to publish, the first thing you’ll want to do to ensure you don’t close doors you didn’t realize were open is to research your options. But to succeed in the publishing industry requires far more than knowing whether you want to traditionally publish or author publish or hybrid publish. There’s a wealth of knowledge available to guide you through how to format your manuscript for querying literary agents, how to submit your novel to publishers, how to find reputable agents and publishers and decide which ones you’d like to work with, and what will help you, in the long run, to sell your books once they’re printed.
Your first goal now should be to find out what you don’t know so that you can ask the right questions. If you don’t know what to research, you’re not likely to find the guidance you need. So begin studying the industry.
Starting with this blog post, type terms you don’t understand or haven’t heard before into your preferred search engine. Some resources, like those at the end of this article, we’re happy to provide for you. But the skill you develop in learning how to use the vast resources at your disposal—and there are A LOT of highly reputable, highly effective resources available for free—will prepare you for the rest of your publishing journey. No matter how you publish, whether you do it all yourself or hire a team of professionals to work with you, there will be processes that are standard within the industry that don’t carry over from other industries and markets.
To sell a book is vastly different from selling a toaster. The publishing industry is constantly changing and adapting to the times, to new technology, and to new financial pressures. The publishing industry in 2024 does not operate the same way it did when Jack London was getting published for the very first time. The standards have changed. It is your job to know what the new standards are for publishers, authors, marketing teams, production timelines, and more. Even down to the nitty gritty details of what makes a book “professionally published.” Learn what a style guide is and which one the book industry uses (in comparison to News or Educational media). Set your expectations properly by researching how much the average author earns from their book sales per year. Listen to author interviews and writing advice podcasts and learn from the experiences of others so that you can decide if this marathon is something you’re interested in.
Step 2: Don’t Get Ahead of Yourself
It is easy to get ahead of yourself and slap your first draft together with a cover and publish it yourself, but if you rush that process as a way to “get the book out there” and “get the attention of traditional publishing” we have bad news for you: once a book is published, it is incredibly difficult to get it picked up by another publisher. It does happen, but it is rare and in exceptional circumstances where a favor was called in or significant edits have been made. So don’t jump the gun until you’ve done your research and are ready to put your best foot forward.
Step 3: Connect with Other Writers
Now that you’re equipped with a beginning knowledge of the publishing industry, you’re able to understand what other writers are talking about when they talk about ARCs and KDP and reviews and distribution. The online writing community is one of the most welcoming and encouraging groups you could enter when you’re first navigating the publishing world. Begin asking questions, making friends, and learning from your fellow writers. Eventually, once you’ve established a relationship with them, you may benefit from getting additional eyes on your manuscript for feedback.
This is key to your growth as a writer. Most developmental editors agree that new writers make the same mistakes, mistakes that tell acquisitions editors that a book is not yet ready for publication. Talking to other writers will help you identify these pitfalls in your own work before you approach industry professionals, like literary agents or acquisitions editors. Learning about these common mistakes early can help boost your chances to stand out from the slush pile when you do start submitting.
Step 4: Connect with Your Ideal Readers
Too many writers wait to establish a connection with their ideal readership until they have a book to sell them. This skips a crucial part of the consumer retention process and ignores the reality that all marketing is relationship-building.
And yes, even now, even in the drafting and editing of your manuscript, you should begin marketing. Why?
Consider the last product you purchased. How did you decide on that product? How did you hear about it? Did you ask your friends if they have experience with the brand? Did you go to a trusted source for reviews from others and decide from that? In marketing, we call that word of mouth. It is still the most effective marketing campaign for any product largely because it can’t be replicated inauthentically.
You must build a relationship with the people you one day hope to sell to. They need to know you, they need to believe in you, and they need to be ready to support you and drive you to success. It is much easier to get a passionate friend to buy a copy of your book than it is to convince a stranger to take a chance on you. Make a lot of friends and let them drive your momentum.
Especially in the entertainment industry (of which book publishing is a subset) the relationship with a fan base is crucial to your success and the success of your art. Identifying the types of people who would be interested in your book before you’re able to hand them your book to read ensures that your audience will be excited to hear from you when the time comes.
Your ideal reader will likely share commonalities with you, which should mean that connecting with your ideal reader will feel more like making friends than making fans. It should be easy, and it should be fun. If it is neither of those, you’re doing it wrong.
Step 5: Determine Your Path (and the Resources You’ll Require)
Hopefully, once you’ve reached this stage, you’ll be far more educated in how the publishing industry works, what a typical timeline is from “I finished the first draft!” to “My book is coming out!”, and the various options available to pave the way between those stages.
But if you’re not familiar with these various options, we’d love to tell you about the most well-known three and the other five.
IBPA (the Independent Book Publisher’s Association), a nonprofit organization focused on making book publishing accessible to a wide range of authors and publishers who don’t neatly fit into the corporate publishing model, recently released the Publishing MAP (Models and Author Pathways) to help educate aspiring authors on the various different publishing models available to them.
The most well-known models are Traditional Corporate Publishing, known in the industry as the “Big 5” because these are the household name companies producing the lion’s share of the books on the market, Author/Self Publishing in which the author produces, distributes, and markets their own book from start to finish and takes on the role of the publisher for decision making and creative control, and therefore also takes on the financial liability of production, and Hybrid Publishing which acts as a sort of happy medium between the first two—matching authors with a professional team, with distribution and professional standards, but still granting the author partial creative control they would have with Author Publishing. Think of this as “hiring the experts” to get the job done correctly and to have a guide into the publishing industry.
Other paths to publication meet different needs and provide different opportunities, such as:
- Independent Publishers and Small Presses
- University Presses
- Higher Education and Academic Publishers
- Association, Society, and Non-Profit Publishers
- Service Providers
There is no one “right” path to publishing. Just paths that cause some doors to open and others to close. Some authors thrive in author publishing because they are highly equipped with the knowledge and the desire to make it work. Others long for the security of a proven track record that comes with a traditional press, regardless of the size. Still others would rather do it themselves but don’t have the technical skill to do it well, so they hire service providers to meet their needs and account for their weaknesses.
You have so many options in how you get your book published. But it all starts with research and education so you can make the choices that meet your own goals and ideas.
Step 6: Determine the Order of Events for Your Publishing Path
There is a lot of information on the standard path for corporate trade publishing. There’s a growing database of knowledge for the ideal path for an author publisher to take.
Most of the time, the production of a book will look rather similar. This process, for a professionally produced book, typically contains these things:
- Developmental editing
- Copy editing
- Layout
- Cover Design
- Proofreading
- Advance Copy Distribution for Early Reviews
- Production and Distribution
- Launch Marketing
- Continued Marketing
This is a highly simplified list, and the process may not look exactly the same for every book. But all of these things take time, which is why most books take at minimum a year to produce. And if a book has come out sooner than that, one or more of these things was likely rushed or skipped. That may be an intentional choice because having the book in hand was more important at the time. Decide early what your goal is and if you’re happy to miss some of these standard items and take the costs associated with their lack.
Skipping Developmental Editing, for example, may lead to missed plot holes or poor pacing that puts readers off once the book is published. Skipping Copy Editing may lead to a high number of misspellings and typos that lead to lower ratings and reviews from distracted readers. Releasing a book with no advance reviews or readers may create an unnecessary uphill battle as you try to convince strangers to buy the book with no word of mouth proof. Everything has a cause and effect, and everything has benefits and drawbacks.
If you’ve made it this far in this blog post, congratulations! You’ve already shown your dedication to your craft and to your work. You’re already doing the research to learn about the industry—a new part of your job that never goes away. There will always be something new to learn and something new to try. By landing on this page, you’re already showing your desire to learn all you can. That will help you in the long run.
Torchflame Books is a Hybrid Publishing house that routinely works with debut and first-time authors to get their books published and out into the world. We would love to work with you, and we invite you to submit your manuscript for our acquisitions editor’s consideration. If we’re interested in publishing your work, we’ll be in touch.
Learn more about our submission guidelines here.
Suggested Resources:
IBPA Publishing MAP: https://www.ibpa-online.org/page/PublishingMAP
IBPA Hybrid Publisher Criteria: https://www.ibpa-online.org/page/hybridpublisher
IBPA Industry Standards Checklist for a Professionally Published Book: https://www.ibpa-online.org/page/standardschecklist
A Beginner’s Guide to Publishing Jargon: https://torchflamebooks.com/2023/11/14/a-beginners-guide-to-publishing-jargon/
Bookends Literary Agency Blog and YouTube Channel: https://bookendsliterary.com/education/
BookBub Partners Blog—a great starting point for learning about book sales: https://insights.bookbub.com/
Writer’s Conferences of all types, but especially targeted toward your genre or subset of the industry, are fantastic resources for making connections in person with editors, agents, writers, and service providers. They’re an investment, but the knowledge available and shared there is often more in-depth than those shared with blogs and other online content.
AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) lists a high number of conferences and other events every year. https://www.awpwriter.org/wcc/directory_conferences_centers
Writer’s Digest Blog and Magazine: https://www.writersdigest.com/
The Book Publishing Process Simplified: https://hannabooksolutions.wordpress.com/2023/03/03/the-book-publishing-process-simplified/
Lastly, books. There are so many books published about the publishing industry.
