Ah, the thrill of finishing a novel. You’ve spilled your soul onto 300 pages of tortured genius, and now the world – nay, the publishing industry – must fall at your feet. Right?

Wrong.

Before you clutch that manuscript to your chest and hit “send” with trembling fingers, let’s talk about what actually happens when your email lands in an agent’s inbox. Spoiler: if you skip the prep, your brilliant work will likely get deleted faster than you can say “subjective industry.”

Here’s how to increase your odds of success – and avoid joining the tragic ranks of great authors […]

Let’s face it—publishing a paperback and calling it a day is like baking a cake and never frosting it. Sure, it’s technically a cake. But it’s not quite ready for the party. In today’s ever-evolving literary jungle, if your book exists only in physical form, it’s basically wearing a sign that says, “I don’t like success.”

The Modern Reader: A Fickle, Digital Beast

Once upon a time, readers carried books everywhere. Literal books. Heavy, spine-breaking tomes. Back then, lugging around War and Peace was considered a character-building exercise. Today? Readers prefer downloading entire libraries onto devices lighter than a ham […]

There seems to be a tide of “Trad Publishing Vs. Self-Publishing” posts out there at the moment. As if it’s a choice. I’ve taken a real umbrage to this. Because honestly, it’s not. Here’s why.

Traditional publishing – The Process

To get your book published by a so-called Big-Five publisher, i.e., Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, or one of their imprints — or honestly, any niche trad publisher, you’re going to need to go through a long and painful process. Here it is:

1. Get an agent. Various ways of getting an agent involve first, […]