How to Get Your Book Published: A High-Level Overview
By Mary Kole
Mary Kole is a former literary agent, freelance editor, writing teacher, author of Writing Irresistible Kidlit, and IP developer for major publishers, with over a decade in the publishing industry.
If you've written a book, or are even thinking about it, odds are good that you also want to learn how to get your book published. That’s the dream for a lot of writers. So how do you turn your idea into an actual, published book? In this article, I’ll take a high-level look at the process of getting a book deal, from generating a robust idea to writing your draft to revising the project and then going after potential publication. Curious about how to get your book published? Let’s dive in.
How to Get Your Book Published: Crafting a Robust Idea
The first step in getting a book deal is creating a robust book idea. This means that your idea should be original, marketable, and something that you're passionate about. You should have a story theme at the heart of it—or something that you want to say. Brainstorming is key at this stage. You also need to decide the kind of book you’re writing and your target audience. Without these broad strokes decisions made, you will be working harder, not smarter.
Don't be afraid to jot down whatever comes to mind, even if it seems silly at first. There are no bad ideas when you’re first learning how to get your book published. Once you have a list of potential ideas, it's time to start doing some research. See what similar books (comparative titles) are out there and what their angle is. How will yours potentially be different? Why would someone want to read it? Answering these questions will help you hone in on a strong, unique book hook.
How to Get Your Book Published: Writing a Draft
Once you've settled on an idea, it's time to start writing. If you’re new to writing a novel-length work, you might want to consider crafting a novel outline first, so you can get yourself organized before embarking on the process of generating 80,000 words.
The best way to get started is simply to sit down and start putting words on the page once you’ve figured out your character arcs and plot arcs. Your first draft doesn't have to be perfect—in fact, it probably won't be. The important thing is to keep going and not get bogged down with that perfectionist urge, which is often where people get snarled in writer’s block. Remember that you can always revise later. Just focus on getting the story down for now.
How to Get Your Book Published: Revising the Project
Once you have a complete draft, it's time for revision. This is where you'll really start shaping your story and making it the best it can be. Take some time to put the draft away for a while—between two weeks and a month is ideal—so that when you come back to it, you can approach it with fresh eyes. Then, start reading through with a critical eye, making notes as you go along. This is where you really want to look at character logic, story logic, and the sense of cause and effect in your chapters and scenes. of anything that doesn't work or could be improved upon. Don't be afraid to make big changes at this stage—often, they're necessary in order to make the story stronger. You’re not just moving commas around, you’re self-editing and doing the hard work of reshaping, if you have to.
Most writers get a beta reader, critique partner, or even freelance editor involved here for writing notes. This could be the answer to really engineering your story for success, as writers are notoriously bad for seeing their own work with clear eyes.
How to Get Your Book Published: The Book Deal Process
If you're fortunate enough to receive an offer of representation from an agent, congratulations! The next step is negotiating your literary agency agreement. Once that's been ironed out, your agent will probably ask for a revision to make sure the project is as strong as possible. After they’re confident in your rewrite, they will begin submitting your manuscript to publishers on your behalf (a process known as "going on submission"). This is the process you tend to think of when you imagine the process of how to get your book published.
If more than one publisher expresses interest in your book, your agent will help you weigh your options and choose the best fit for you and your career goals. Once you've decided on a publisher, it's time to negotiate the book contract—another process that your agent will guide you through. (If you don’t have an agent and get a contract or offer yourself directly from a publisher, you might want to invest in an intellectual property lawyer at this point, at a bare minimum.)
If you’re self-publishing, this process looks very different, as there are many strategies that indie writers take advantage of that aren’t available to traditionally published authors. But that’s outside of the scope of this article! Remember, there is more than one correct answer to the question of how to get your book published.
How to Get Your Book Published: Publication Itself
After all that work—brainstorming ideas, drafting, revising, getting a book deal—it's finally time for the publishing part of how to get your book published. But before your book hits shelves (or e-readers), you'll need to negotiate and sign a book contract, which codifies your understanding with your publisher, including things like advances and royalties (the money you'll earn from sales of your book).
Then you’ll do more revision, including copy edits and proofreading. Depending on how far out publication is scheduled, there may not be much for you to do at this stage other than sit back and wait. You may also want to invest some time in your author platform at this stage of how to get your book published. And then, of course, it’s time to market your book in the months before and after it comes out.
Writing a book is no small feat—but seeing your name on a book cover is worth all the blood, sweat, and tears required along the journey of how to get your book published. Getting from initial concept through final revisions and then all the way through signing a publishing contract can seem daunting but if you know the steps involved, you might feel confident and maybe even excited to get started.
For those eagle-eyed readers who are wondering just what kind of editor would write an article with the clunky phrasing of “how to get your book published” over and over on her website, I applaud you for noticing that this reads awkwardly. Please note that I picked this keyword phrase on purpose, as part of my SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. If you’re curious about writer marketing techniques, check out Good Story Marketing.
Click here to purchase Successful Query Letters, my book on query letters, including over forty examples with comprehensive notes on each one. There’s a ton of submission advice, best practices, and insider information in these pages, and you’ll really enjoy seeing what other writers are doing in the slush.