book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?

lilindsey: book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?
how do you publish a book?Please write step after step

Answers and Views:

Answer by Kari
Why don’t you do a bit of research first. There is a LOT to get to that point of actually being chosen to be published. It really isn’t a step by step procedure that gets you there. Research, and invest in the bookmarket book.

Answer by redunicorn
1. Join a Writer’s group
2. Write a Book
3. Rewrite
4. Rewrite
5. Rewrite
6. When group approves, send in to a publisher after following their submission policy to the letter

Answer by Marti
The first step toward becoming an author is to WRITE. Just write. Write as much as you can and as often as you can. Learn your language skills and grammar. Once you’ve completed your first book that you think has potential for publication(your actual FIRST book is almost always never up to par) you need to put it in a draw and not look at it for 2 months. Then, EDIT it. Then, EDIT it again. Then put it away for another week before editing it for a third time.

Once you’ve completed your editing, you need to start thinking about agents and publishing, NEVER BEFORE. Don’t worry about any of that until your story is done. But once you’re done, get a Writer’s Market, and look up agents and publishers who accept your kind of work. You can also search predators and editors, an online sight. Once you find, say 3 agents, you need to send query letters. These letters hold basic synopsis, your intent, and your experience. There are many websites you can find through Google and which I mentioned above that can help with Query letters.

Now you might have seen that word, experience, and freaked. That is the Catch-22 of the publishing world: Publishers and Agents want writers with experience. You can’t get experience without having already published something. This is where magazines, anthologies, and writing contests come in. Write a few short stories, and submit them. You might get lucky, you might not. Agents will overlook lack of experience for a good story, but if they’re busy, not having anything in the experience section could hurt you.

So back to the focus. Now it’s been months, and you’re freaking out. But don’t worry, agents are swamped. These things always take a long amount of time-often at least 6 months to hear a response. Nothing ever happens overnight. Publishing often takes YEARS.

But now, let’s say that you’ve been lucky enough to find an agent who likes your work, so they take you on. Your agent will help prep your work to send it to a publisher. Having an agent is NOT a shoe-in, but it often helps. If a publisher takes you up, they’ll edit your book again and give you suggestions(suggestions are more like ‘DO THIS NOW’) and you’ll fix your story. They’ll publish it, after a few months and a many preparations and alterations.

Now let’s say no agent took you up. This happens. Often. 99% of “writers” who try to get something published fail. And even those who succeeded, they’re not rich or successful. Stephen King, Rowling, Patterson…they’re all flukes. They’re the top .01 percent of authors(ie, the ones who get paid) They weren’t instant successes. They all faced many, MANY rejections before finding someone to take them on. Which goes back to my point about luck. You could be a fabulous writer, but not send your work to the publisher or agent who “gets you”, or your story, fabulous in many ways, might not seem “marketable” to a publisher. The fact is, if they don’t think your book will sell, they won’t touch it.

Some more helpful information can be found at fictionfactor.com.

Answer by ♥Draco’s☠Darling 2♥
So you want to publish a book? Good for you! I think it’s around 82-84% of people want to publish, but don’t. Here you go… (sorry it’s long)

1. KNOW HOW THE PROCESS WORKS

The first rule of getting a book published
is to avoid writing a book. Whoa, what the are we talking about? Yes, it’s very counterintuitive, but the main goal of anyone who wants to publish a book is to land a literary agent, before spending years writing something nobody wants to read. (Of course, if you’re reading this SYW because you’ve already churned out a work of genius, don’t fear; go directly to 2. Prepare a proposal.) Let us explain: the literary world is a very closed community and the people who green light publication accept books only through very specific channels. Think about it: nobody could ever handle reading the mountains of spew that aspiring authors churn out all the time, so the system has established filters to weed out most of the garbage. You need to learn what the filters are and how to get through them. Namely, agents.

Agents — what do they do, exactly?

An agent is a separate individual who performs much of this filtering process. You most certainly don’t want to send a manuscript directly to a publishing house
. They won’t read it. They consider pieces only if they come recommended by an agent. Agents read manuscripts, or ideas for manuscripts (known as queries and proposals), and decide whether a project has promise. If it does, the agent signs a contract with the author, promising to use best efforts to get the thing sold to a publishing house, in exchange for around 15% of the deal. Editors at publishing houses would much rather deal only with agents who have a good track record for presenting quality ideas, so agents can be very choosy about who they sign. Landing an agent, therefore, is the whole idea of the game. Once you have one of those on your side, she will work incredibly hard to get your idea sold.

Agents, in turn, don’t particularly like reading 300-page manuscripts either. In fact, they don’t like reading much more than 1 page. So the first step to getting an agent to even pay attention to you is to send them a query letter. A query letter is essentially a short summary of your idea, who you are, and why you are qualified to write this project.

But you say, “Wait. I don’t wanna give up fifteen percent of my book-deal-to-be. That stinks.” Can you proceed without an agent? Don’t even try. And are they worth the cash? You bet: 85% of zero is nada, and you got nada without an agent there, Chekhov. Don’t worry, though, there are thousands of literary agents all across America and a few excellent guides that give you tons of information about what they like to represent and how to contact them. The very best is the Writer’s Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents, 1999-2000 : Who They Are! What They Want! And How to Win Them Over! by Jeff Herman. But first you need to know what agents want.

2. PREPARE A PROPOSAL
The first step to getting your name in print is to prepare a proposal. Remember, the proposal is a document that acts as a thorough outline of your idea for a book. Although you will ultimately contact agents by sending a query letter first, if any agent wants to follow up with you by reading your proposal, you will need to have written it already. So here’s what to write:

1. General Overview: The first 2 pages or so should be a general summary of the entire book. If it is a non-fiction piece, just explain what you intend to write about and what topics you will cover. If you are writing fiction, provide a very general synopsis of your plot.

2. Market: Next, write a 3-page description of the market to whom you think your book will appeal. Describe the age, socio-economic, and educational characteristics of the audience you think your book will draw.

3. Competition: This section is where you provide a description of the other books out there that also cover this topic. Be honest here because an agent can easily find out if you’re omitting some best-seller. Remember, a market filled with similar books can be a very good sign that there is money to be made here. Hell, who wouldn’t have written a Titanic book in ’98 if they could have? Thirteen-year-old girls couldn’t buy enough of all that nonsense.

4. Authors: This portion of the proposal is a 1-page description of yourself and your co-authors, if any. Boast all you can because your agent is going to want to think that you are a great author for this book, to convince a publishing house to pay you for your idea.

5. Chapter Summary: The bulk of the proposal will be chapter by chapter outline of what you intend to cover in your book. If you are writing fiction, here is where you may have to include up to twenty pages of actual samples. If the piece is non-fiction, stick to the minimum, either outlining or briefly synopsizing the heart of each chapter.

6. Delivery: This

Answer by celtic_vampriss
There are a lot of different ways. First I would mail a hard copy of the story to yourself, its like the poor man’s copyright. Then you could try sending it to actual publishers, but usually they won’t even look at it unless you have some kind of name (like your already famous). The way most people go about it now is an agent. You send you stuff to different agents, usually just the first chapter or even just a summary and then they contact you saying they’ll take you book, and then they send it to publishers. You have to pay them and stuff but that’s part of the deal, it costs money to get published.

There is also self publishing. Lulu.com allows you to publish your own book and buy copies, its very cool but not official. However you can use the site to buy a ISBN for your book and then you can sell it on line to different sites.

One thing i would recommend looking into is writersmarket.com. You have to pay to use the site, but it is highly recommended. (I have heard of several authors using it.)

Another thing, I have never been published, only self published. So if you want other opinions it is always best to go to the official sites of authors that you like, they usually have FAQs that tell how they got published. Not always, but sometimes, that’s how I heard about writer’s market. They have already been published so they really know what they’re doing.