How to Get Published

by John Bowers

Writers hear a lot of talk about grabbing the reader’s attention on page 1. Editors, agents, and publishers aren’t likely to look at your manuscript if you don’t grab their attention right away, and if they don’t look at it, they won’t publish it - and if they don’t publish it, no one else will ever have a chance to put it down because it just didn’t grab them.

So it’s a no-brainer that you need to get that reader’s attention right away. And the only way to do that is to hook them immediately - which is why this part of your novel is usually called the “hook”.

Some hooks, of course, are better than others. It is generally agreed that you have until the end of the first paragraph to sink that hook, but that in itself can be a problem. If the first paragraph is too long, or poorly constructed, the reader might not even last that long. So I say, Bait the hook. (more…)

by D. Keith Howington

It’s your responsibility to feed dialog into your readers’ minds without causing them to do a double-take and have to go back and read a bit again. When that happens, you’ve lost the mood, and lost the reader. Too much of that can lose them permanently.

We all know the basics: that “said” is essentially invisible, that using adverbs like “angrily” to convey feeling is risky, and that using speech tags such as “he smiled” are physical impossibilities and jarring to the reader. (more…)

by Penny C. Sansevieri

If you’re tired of hearing “no” every time you try and secure a book signing, take heart. Signings have become a lot more challenging since more books than ever are being published each year and stores are cutting back on events. What’s an author to do? If you’re hungry for an event and not willing to wade through the endless submission process of a bookstore, consider doing events in non-bookstore markets.

What’s a non-bookstore event? Well, obviously it’s anything outside of a bookstore but more than that, it’s a unique location, likely in your city or town. We’ve done events at video stores, electronics stores, grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, even Hallmark stores. When you start to dig into this market, the possibilities are really endless. It’s just a matter of finding a place that will make sense to host your event. (more…)

by John Bowers
Any writer who hopes to be published in any genre has, hopefully, consulted many sources of advice on how to proceed. Almost every such source, whether book, article, or blog, will tell you that before you submit (and this is especially true with fiction), you need to polish your work.

Polishing means many things; it includes proper grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and even formatting per the target publisher’s requirements. One of the biggest items in polishing is spelling.

Many people have trouble spelling. For some it’s just a matter of aptitude; for others it may be that they had no desire to write until they were already out of school, much too late to concentrate on those spelling lessons. And, I suspect, some people just don’t care.

But if you want to write - and get published - you need to start caring. (more…)