I wrote a book. Now what?

Writing is hard. Publishing is very hard.

—Courtney Malm

For a couple of weeks I basked in the glory of those wonderful words at the end of my typescript: THE and END. I felt like I’d just enjoyed the world’s most monstrous haircut. (That’s not exactly the crude metaphor I shared with friends, but let’s move along.)

From the age of sixteen, working in bookstores and haunting libraries, I’d longed for a day of completing a good novel of my own. Well—I did it. It took about two years of concentrated effort. I neglected my friends and my To-Do list and my strip of back yard. My savings were blown. But I had a novel and I knew it was a pretty good novel.

What next?

When you fantasize for decades about writing a good book, you can expect a few stray fantasies about people actually reading that book. While I was focused on writing, I tried not to think about that. First I have to finish. Then we’ll see about publishing. Well, now I had a THE END which meant THE BEGINNING of a new challenge. Writing fiction demands one set of skills and talents. Getting that fiction out into the world is just as important, but it takes a whole different set of abilities.

I started contacting everyone I knew who’d ever written a book, published a book, worked in publishing, read a book, used a dictionary as a booster seat…. I asked a lot of questions. And yes, everyone seems to agree that publishing a book is some hard work. Publishing was always a tricky business, but now there are more writers than ever, and literary fiction is not a particularly great seller. If Ulysses or Tropic of Capricorn were hitting the market today, they might not make the cut.

I learned something about the differences between mainstream publishers (the Big Five, which control something like 80% of the books sold in the US), the indy/alternative presses, and self-publishing. I learned something about agents (you need one to reach the Big 5; it may be possible to approach one of the indies on your own). I learned about the “query letter,” a brief pitch to a prospective agent or publisher. I learned about “comp titles,” which are the books to which you compare your book, in your query letter, to whet the reader’s appetite. (“Think of Moby Dick meets Harry Potter in a camp for space cadets chasing an intergalactic whale with terminal cancer.”) I got a few names of agents and publishers, friends of friends, who… might be willing to look at the first ten pages of my novel, though they’re crazy busy at the moment.

My dear friend Anne, who used to work with Harper Perennial, told me: “You need a website if you want anyone to take you seriously.” That was five days ago. Tonight it’s THE END to constructing the website. I want people to take me seriously. I’ve got a book to publish.