Post by account_disabled on Dec 30, 2023 4:50:44 GMT
It's not easy to sell a novel to a publishing house. I'm not saying this from personal experience - I've never sent any novel to a publisher, also because I haven't written one yet - but I'm saying it on the basis of what we read around and the testimonies of various writers who have tried. But it's not difficult to understand what the current situation is, with all the volume of novels published every year. If 1000 novels are published, it means that publishers have received 100,000, or perhaps more. Already in the early 1900s Jack London spoke of how difficult it was to make your way among all the authors jostling to get published. More than a century has passed since then and things have obviously gotten worse for an author who wants to make it in the publishing world.
The need for confirmation Today I notice a great need to obtain confirmation of the validity of one's writing work . It is a need that was already felt in London's time. Some novice writers wrote to him, sending him their Special Data manuscripts for his opinion. Jack London responded directly and bluntly. If a story was pitiful, he said it without hesitation. Jack London, in one of his writings, however, said something that every novice writer should stick in their minds. A writer is not a literary agency . He's a writer. If he starts acting as a literary agent, he stops writing, that is, doing what he loves to do and what he has to do. The biggest mistake an author can make today, in the hope of getting published, is to send his manuscripts to a writer. To someone who should be a competitor to him. A writer is someone who reads a lot, but reads for information and for his personal pleasure, he cannot read as a literary agent.
So how do you satisfy that need for confirmation? Today there is something that didn't exist in London's time: the internet. Enter the catalog of publishing houses Some time ago I wrote that, before sending a manuscript to a publisher, you need to buy at least a couple of books from their catalogue, to see how well-finished they are. Never send a manuscript blindly, shooting into the mix and hoping, or rather deluding yourself, that someone will publish it sooner or later. The catalog of a publishing house must be observed and studied to understand what it publishes. We cannot propose to a publisher something that he does not publish, that has no place, no space in his editorial catalogue. It's not just a question of literary genre. It's clear that no author is naive enough to send a horror novel to a publishing house that doesn't publish genre fiction. Even within the same genre there are preferences, perhaps recurring themes.
The need for confirmation Today I notice a great need to obtain confirmation of the validity of one's writing work . It is a need that was already felt in London's time. Some novice writers wrote to him, sending him their Special Data manuscripts for his opinion. Jack London responded directly and bluntly. If a story was pitiful, he said it without hesitation. Jack London, in one of his writings, however, said something that every novice writer should stick in their minds. A writer is not a literary agency . He's a writer. If he starts acting as a literary agent, he stops writing, that is, doing what he loves to do and what he has to do. The biggest mistake an author can make today, in the hope of getting published, is to send his manuscripts to a writer. To someone who should be a competitor to him. A writer is someone who reads a lot, but reads for information and for his personal pleasure, he cannot read as a literary agent.
So how do you satisfy that need for confirmation? Today there is something that didn't exist in London's time: the internet. Enter the catalog of publishing houses Some time ago I wrote that, before sending a manuscript to a publisher, you need to buy at least a couple of books from their catalogue, to see how well-finished they are. Never send a manuscript blindly, shooting into the mix and hoping, or rather deluding yourself, that someone will publish it sooner or later. The catalog of a publishing house must be observed and studied to understand what it publishes. We cannot propose to a publisher something that he does not publish, that has no place, no space in his editorial catalogue. It's not just a question of literary genre. It's clear that no author is naive enough to send a horror novel to a publishing house that doesn't publish genre fiction. Even within the same genre there are preferences, perhaps recurring themes.