7 Things I wish I’d Known About Getting Published When I First Started Writing Novels.

1. Writing for the love of it isn’t enough.

If you want to be published in popular fiction, then often that means writing in genres and categories that aren’t your favourite in order to meet reader and editorial demands, if you want to be published regularly.

2. Getting published isn’t such a big deal.

No fireworks go off, the world doesn’t stop, and no one treats you differently. Even you yourself don’t feel differently. It takes a body of published work to start feeling like a legitimate published writer. The first published piece is just the first. But you do have to celebrate it, because it’s a genuine personal benchmark and no one else will celebrate it for you.

3. On the other hand, getting published is really, really cool.

Once you’re published, you get to say you’re an author, instead of just saying you’re a writer, and when people ask the inevitable follow-up question; “Oh, and what books have you published?” you can actually answer “My book xxx was just released by xxxx,” and watch their jaws drop a little, because the majority of the world can’t say that.

4. Getting published becomes easier as you get published.

You start to build relationships with editors and publishers and it does become easier to get published as you build a track record…as long as you don’t screw up too badly with either your relationships or your reputation, or your product…and you are producing product, not art. The key is consistency. But many writers have a low tolerance for boredom and can’t remain consistent book after book, and shoot themselves in the foot.

5. Getting published is as much about relationships you build as it is about the novels you’re writing.

These days you can’t afford to be a hermit in a cabin in the woods. It just doesn’t work that way. Even before you get published, you will need to build relationships with agents, publishers, editors, critique partners, conference organizers, promotion people, social networks, industry personnel, influential bloggers…the list goes on. Publishers like to see writers who have platforms already in place, with potential readership bases ready to go. They want pre-packaged deals. There’s no such thing as “bringing up” an author any more. You have to do that yourself before you present yourself to publishing houses and agents.

6. There are exceptions to every “rule” about getting published as there are rules about getting published.

That’s what makes getting published so damned difficult — because you can always find someone out there who is an exception to the rule and succeeded anyway, who makes you think you can get away with breaking with common sense. But they are exceptions. They got lucky. Don’t think you can pull off their rare coincidences and/or wild talent a second time. You can’t. You have your own talent and maybe you will have a different set of wild coincidences crop up that you need to take advantage of, and if you’re too busy trying to re-create Author X’s circumstances, you’ll miss out on your own opportunity.

But in most situations, wild coincidences and lucky breaks don’t happen at all. You need to settle in for the long haul and work your ass off, just like the rest of us. Thinking you’re going to get the lucky break is just setting yourself up for disappointment. Expect that you won’t. Expect that you’ll have to do it the hard way.

7. The longer you hang in there, the luckier you get.

And just to refute my own statement: Everyone knows that the odds of a tossed penny coming up heads is exactly 50%. But if you tossed a penny ten times, in reality, it wouldn’t come up heads five times out of ten. You’d have to toss that penny an astronomical number of times before the real number of times the penny actually came up heads was even. Various factors affect the toss — the air streaming passed the edges, the way the penny was tossed, friction from the fingers of the person tossing the penny, variations in the shape of the penny, sound waves in the air from noises nearby — so there would have to be thousands, if not millions of tosses before the outcome approached true 50%.

The same with the publishing game. If you want to level the playing field, and eliminate all the unfair factors that might be affecting your odds of getting published, then just hang in there. Don’t quit. Keep writing. Keep submitting. Keep networking. Keep working on all the factors you can influence as a writer.

You haven’t failed until you quit.

And you never know what’s around the corner.