I had a business colleague reach out to me about a friend of
hers who wrote a book and was thinking about getting it published and how to
start the process. With the myriad of issues in publishing today I had no idea where
to begin spewing my knowledge. Do I talk about editing, agent getting,
publishers, self-publishing options. Do I talk about creating a fan base with
facebook and twitter and all the other things involved with marketing?
A thousand things went through my head but when I finally
settled down I realized I needed information from this newbie writer first in
order to think about what information was going to be the most useful to her.
So I came up with a list of questions and I think they pretty much some up
where a person who has never previously published a book before needs to answer
before beginning the process.
1.
How long did it take you to write this book? How
long do you think it will take you to write the next? This tells me several
pieces of information because while saying that it took five years to write the
first book is okay – because then it’s just a hobby and your tinkering with it,
having fun, say it will take five years to write the next means unless you’ve
just written the great American novel, the publishing world isn’t going to be
thrilled with that.
2.
What do you write? Who do you most closely resemble
in the publishing world? So many times people will tell me – I’m totally
unique. I’m like no one else. I don’t fit any genre. This is not an okay
answer. If you are deciding to go the traditional route – you must be able to
give agents and editor of who you are and where they are going to shelve your
books. I would make the same argument for self-publishers because in that case
you have to know what target audience to market your book to.
3.
What are you goals for this book? Do you just
want to see it published? Or do you want to hit the NYT list? This helps me
figure out if Indie Publishers are in play, or maybe you would be okay with
just selling a few copies from Amazon or you want to go whole hog into the
business of publishing.
4.
What are your goals for your career? Do you see
yourself making the NYT or will you just
be happy to publish a book and say you did it? Obviously this helps me decide
if I’m going to explain to the newbie author so much of what goes into building
a writing career.
Any other questions you can think of to add to this list?
2 comments:
Not sure the best way to ask but I always try to feel people out to see of they can handle real advice or merely want to hear what they want to hear. Some people cannot handle criticism or the realization that writing the book is often the easy part.
Sorry I missed this yesterday. I think your list of questions is great.
Someone recently sent me an e-mail saying that someone they knew wanted to know how to find an editor... Again. For what? What are they writing? How do they want to see it published? Impossible to even start to answer without asking questions.
In this particular case, it was a doctor who, um, hadn't even written the novel yet, but wanted to know what the process would be once it was done.
I almost laughed. Then I remembered me back a decade ago. I wanted to understand all that stuff before I'd written a book too. Problem is, it's about 100% more complicated now than 10 years ago...
Post a Comment