How do you get a book published? How long does it take?

Answer 1

Hi there. The biggest hurdle for a first time author is finding a bona fide agent to represent you. Most agencies have thousands of manuscripts sent to them every year and typically, they only select a few works that are worthy to represent. Submitting your work directly to publishers is almost a waste of time, as the slush pile for publishers is ten times what it is for most agencies.

DO NOT submit to anyone that requires up front money or "reading" fees. Most agencies will read your book for nothing if it's well presented and if they think it has merit. Reading fees are a rip off. You can check on legitimate agencies at the "Preditors & Editors" website. They keep an up to date list of current agents and any problems writers have had with them.

Now, once you find an agency, you need a great query letter to get their attention. Search the web for examples. If your query letter is sloppy or has misspelled words, you're TOAST. Get a qualified copy editor to help you, if you can afford one. Then, once the agency reads your query and agrees to look at your manuscript, MAKE SURE IT IS PERFECT before you send it off. Again, bad formatting, grammar problems or poor spelling will doom you from the start. Pay an editor to proof your work--it's worth a few hundred bucks to get your foot in the door with an agent.

After that, be prepared to wait up to 3 months for an answer from the agency. DO NOT submit to more than one agency at a time. If your work is good and the agency sees potential in it, they will offer you a contract. From there, it can be another 3 month wait for them to find you a publisher. Once you get a publisher, it takes about a year to actually see your book in print.

You can also go the eBook route, which is becoming more popular every day now that eBook readers and publishers are more readily available. I did that and it worked out very well for me. I went from a very small online eBook publisher to a major hard cover print publisher, but it took several years. These days, it's much more acceptable to start out with an electronic version and move into print. However, you should think about doing your own eBook instead of paying some company to throw it together for a fee. Most of those services could care less if your book looks good, has typos or whatever. They also OWN the ISBN's for their titles--you do not--so keep that in mind.

I hope this helps. If you're serious about getting published, you can make it happen. It takes time, patience and a lot of luck. And as a note of reality, of all the fiction books published in a given year, only about 13% ever sell more than 1,000 copies. Most (75%) sell fewer than 500. Contrary to popular belief, most authors don't get rich.

Jon Baxley, author, editor, proofreader and ghostwriter

THE SCYTHIAN STONE (a medieval fantasy eBook)
THE BLACKGLOOM BOUNTY (a medieval fantasy epic in hard cover from Thomson Gale)

Answer 2

You get a book published most easily by submitting query letters to an agent, after a couple of rejections, an agent will take you on, you sign a contract splitting a 10-20% of the profits you get to them. Then, the agent submits your work among various publishers and eventually, a publisher will take you on. You sign a contract with them, your share of the advance gets split due to the agreement with the agent, and you'll get a percent of royalties for each book that sells, although the book has to sell well to get a large portion of royalties. Then, your book is edited, you make or break suggestions, the concept art for the book is made out, you get copy editing pages you need to look through, which is plenty boring, and eventually, your book is made. But, it depends on which publisher accept your work on when the book comes out. Most publishers come out with the book a year after signing the contract, some two, and a few three years. William Morrow takes two years to publish the book after contract. And TOR can take up to 2-3 years to publish after contract. It's up to the publisher, really.

Answer 3

You'll have to find a publisher that will take on your idea/script. But don't think you can just drop it off and all is fine. Once you got a contract you are most likely to get a template for word to put your book in the right format. You will then have to send it iteratively to different editors and get it back with comments to change. Once that is done there is proofreading and layout checking. I just published a (technical) book and it took me about 6 months only working in my freetime (most on the tube). You will read your own stuff over and over again, so it might be a good idea to REALLY like the topic :-)

Answer 4

there are two ways to do it basically..

1. publishing company
basically you write out your manuscript and try to shop it around to different publishing companies. if they like what you've written, then they may buy the book from you or set you up with a contract.

Pros: the company will basically take care of everything from this point on. they will invest the money to publish, layout, artwork, market, distribute and sell your book and then pay you the royalties. you just have to sit back and wait for the fame and fortune to roll in

Cons: it's difficult as all hell to get a company to take on that type of responsibility. they basically invest their money in the book and they expect to get it back so you may not see anything in the beginning while they are handling distribution.

2. self publish
there are some companies that will charge you a price to publish your book.

Pros: basically you have total control over everything and you take full responsibility for every aspect of the book

Cons: you take full responsibility. it's a lot of hard work. you may not know what you are doing. you can get pulled in by the wrong type of company. you use your own money to invest and you may lose your investment if you don't know what you're doing.

personal experience
my parents wrote a book and decided to self publish. they sort of kept me outside the loop (which was a mistake because i know more about the process). they basically got railroaded by some crappy self publisher that charged them thousands of dollars. it was upsetting to me because my parents never let me know what was going wrong because they didnt know what the company was doing was wrong and unprofessional. now they are on their second book and they've decided to keep me in the loop but they're shopping it around first.