How does getting your book published work?

Ronni greyO: How does getting your book published work?
So basically I’m writing a book and was hoping (if it’s good enough) to get it published when it’s finished.
It would be my first book and I’ve done a little research into publishing but I was just hoping to get clarification. It looks at if most publishers do not accept unsolicited manuscripts so what’s the process with finding an agent, and then having them send the manuscript to publishers. I’m assuming they take a large cut of all sales as well?
If it’s any use the book will be in the horror/suspense sort of genre.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Liam.
Hello Ronni,

You are right in saying that the majority of publishing houses do not accept unsolicited manuscripts, but to send a manuscript first would be the wrong way of going about it. You can send an enquiry letter to a publishing house as to whether they wish to see your book proposal and manuscript. The same goes for a literary agent, who are easy enough to find – if you go to your local town or city library there will be Yellow Pages and various business index’s. First you write your enquiry letter, then they would wish to see your book proposal. In fact, they are very unlikely to ever ask to see your manuscript in its full form. As for royalties, that really depends on the agency company and the publishing house I can give you no fixed rate – but it is around 30-50% together.

You don’t even need to finish your book to start the publishing process, as long as you know the basic outline(s) to define it in your enquiry letter and book proposal. If successful in getting into a publishing house, you will be passed between the Editorial department and will work on the editing of your work. This process alone can take anywhere from a month to a year.

Best of luck.

Answer by Steven J Pemberton
Finish the book. You can’t sell what isn’t ready for the public to buy, or nearly so. (You can sell a non-fiction book on the strength of some sample chapters and an outline of the rest, but this doesn’t work for fiction.) Edit the book at least a couple of times to fix the obvious mistakes. Join a critique group, who will find most of the mistakes you missed.

“No unsolicited manuscripts” basically means “get an agent”. If you try to get around that, by sending the publisher something else or approaching them in a “non-standard” way, unless you’re astonishingly good or astonishingly lucky (probably both), it won’t work.

To find an agent, if you live in North America, try agentquery.com, which has searchable listings. Outside North America, most countries have a directory, updated annually, that lists all the reputable agents in that country, along with lots of other useful information. It’s usually called Writers’ Market or something similar. Figure out which agents might be interested in a horror/suspense sort of book and apply to each of them, sending them whatever they say they want to see from unpublished writers. Send out your queries in batches, so that if any agents give you specific reasons for not representing you, you can use that to improve the next batch. (Usually, they don’t say anything more specific than “no.”)

For the love of all you hold sacred, do not rely on the Yellow Pages or Google to find an agent. Reputable agents don’t need to advertise, beyond being in agentquery.com and/or Writers’ Market. Just being listed there brings in thousands of queries a year. Any agent who isn’t listed there is probably a scammer, who just wants to milk you for as much money as he can.

A reputable agent earns his money by taking a percentage of your income from writing as commission, so if you don’t get paid, he doesn’t get paid. This is one reason why it’s so hard to get an agent to represent you. The percentage varies, but 15% is typical. As the author, you get around 10% of the book’s retail price as a royalty. The agent’s commission comes out of that.

EDIT: (Looks at TU/TD counts.) Wow. Someone can’t handle the truth.

Answer by Jake
u need an agent .. just google it and ull find them 🙂

lol at the tus and tds .. ‘someone cant hand the truth’ .. lmao ….. ,, someone cant handle internet 5pixelby 5 pixel boxes of thumbs either