How to Get Published

by Al Kalar

One of my jobs in this madhouse, is “gatekeeper”. I review new submissions to see if they get rejected up front or considered for publication. I hate saying “no”, but if I don’t, we’d be flooded with less than top notch material.

Lousy material takes too much time to whip into shape and often can’t be saved. Although we edit everything we publish, we’re not in the business of editing poor quality stuff to help a writer get published. There are people who do that and some are very good at it (and some are not). But, even though our editors are great, our job is publishing.

Back in May, I gave you 11 Ways to Get Rejected. Well, what about the flipside? You know, the goal of the submission process - acceptance.

Obviously, the most important thing is to not do any of those 11 deadly things.

We’re strictly an eBook publisher, so we do everything digitally. To get a novel accepted at AKW Books, you should do the following: (more…)

by Evan Marshall

When you’re learning how to write a good novel, it’s critical that you understand how very important it is to come up with a really great initial idea. You want to make sure your idea intrigues and inspires you and you want it to hook your readers from the first page to the last. The best way to come up with a good novel idea that accomplishes both of these things is to begin your story with a major crisis. If you choose the crisis using the guidelines I give below, I think you’ll find the resulting story idea will crackle with tension and excitement and will help you write a page-turner that readers and publishers will love. A good crisis will compel your main character to make a decision to solve the problem caused by the crisis and will give him a powerful motivation to succeed. It needs to be a big enough crisis that your main character will need the rest of the novel to overcome it.

Make Sure Your Crisis Fits These Three Criteria (more…)