So the question came up again.
How do I go about getting published?
And I gave the same answer…which was a nonanswer to them, probably. There is no simple answer to that question. Talk to ten different published writers and they are likely to give you ten different stories about how they got published. We all take a different route. Some of us will have some things in common… Jaci Burton, Lora Leigh and I all started out with epublishing and it was right around the time erotic romance was getting noticed by New York. For me, it made getting into New York easier-I got an offer for a novella, which helped me get my foot in the door and from there, I found an agent.
Before I sold with Ellora’s Cave, I’d submitted a few category-type romances to Harlequin and received a couple of rejections. I’d queried one agent. I didn’t join RWA until a year after I’d started writing for Ellora’s Cave and other than the one query, I didn’t bother looking for an agent until the chance to write a novella for Berkley came along.
But somebody else will tell a completely different story.
I really wish I could say there’s some time-proven, well-known road to getting published, but there just isn’t.
There’s a lot of luck involved-getting your book in front of the right editor at the right time. I had one story get passed over by pretty much every editor-there was only one editor left and she was the one who loved it and offered me a contract. The very last editor. I got into erotic romance just before it really took off and that helped me get established and build a reader base and without that reader base, I probably wouldn’t have caught the attention of the editor at Berkley who offered me a contract for a novella.
Luck & timing…they play a huge part in this business. Books that are selling now wouldn’t have likely sold ten years ago. What’s sold ten years from now may be something that wouldn’t sell right now for love or money.
There is no clear cut path. In my opinion, it’s a lot like making your way through a dark, unfamiliar room…you just stumble along as you go and wait for the timing and the luck factor to kick in.
One of the best things I can recommend to those looking to get published is just to immerse yourself in the industry in general. Some useful industry blogs I like:
The best advice I can offer personally
- Keep writing.
- Don’t look for a quick and easy route to getting published-there isn’t one.
- Be prepared…because selling the first book isn’t the hardest part. It’s selling the next one, and the next one, and the next one…and writing the next one, and the next one, and the next one…