How to Get Published

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…)

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 John Bowers

A few years ago I was reading a James Patterson novel and having a jolly old time.  I was deeply immersed in the mystery, which led the protagonist to Southern California and through a number of towns I have visited.  Every single city was correctly indentified, until the narrative mentioned Bakersville!

Bakersville?  Bakersville? There is no such city in California.  But there is a Bakersfield, which is obviously what Patterson meant.  (How the error got past his editors, I’ll never know…except they probably live in Manhattan and think California is part of the Gobi Desert). (more…)