I was just asked by a budding novelist to tell something about the publishing process. Here was my rather abbreviated response:
The best suggestion I can give you is to spend a lot of time on www.writersdigest.com reading articles and chatting on the forums. A subscription to the magazine is also very worthwhile. It’s an excellent manual to the process of getting published in a variety of genres.
In my About Me section there are links to some writerly organizations you may want to check out.
My own personal experience with the process is given at https://shawnbird.com/grace See the article (link at the bottom of the page) called The Story of Grace.
The simplified version of the process goes something like this:
1. write your novel
2. edit your novel 20 times, cutting 10% each time
3. leave the novel for a year
4. read it again, re-write all the parts you now realise are crap
5. send out query packages to agents and/or publishers (cover letter identifying your credentials and a bit about the novel, a one page synopsis of the novel, a 10 page sample of the novel)
6. get a lot of rejection notices in the mail- make particular note of any suggestions given by professionals about your manuscript, fix them
7. get an offer to publish
8. negotiate a contract, get a cheque for your advance
9 (at this point, the publisher may leave your ms in limbo for years. It might never actually be published, even though they paid you for it)
10. edit with the publishers’ editors. They will force you to make painful cuts
11. see a published copy!!!
12. work with the publishing house marketing team to publicize your novel
13. wait for royalty cheques to roll in! 😉 (One friend tells me he sometimes gets royalty cheques for amounts like $1.32)
Shawn L. Bird 