The Author's Inn

So You've Written A Book. Now What?

(Here is an ongoing article I wrote to set out my experiences over ten years
of writing, publishing and marketing my first book.
It's not "professional," but maybe you can find something
that will help you in your writing/publishing endeavors.
Copy and share it if you'd like.
It's in ten parts, so click the buttons at the bottom to continue.)

So You've Written A Book. Now What?
Part 1 (of 10)

I've written a book - an international mystery novel - SANCTION.
What do you mean, So What!? Big Deal!? Well, it was a big deal to me. I'm famous now, right? I'm a real live author. Okay, maybe my name isn't Grisham, or Clancy, but I'm pretty close, aren't I? Once you've written a book, the world sits up and cheers, right? You get famous? Rich? Well, something?

Probably, though, the main thing you get after you've written your life's work is depressed and discouraged. Here you've spent all this time - years even - creating your "baby," and the big question becomes, Now What? There's all those pages sitting there. Just sitting there. They're supposed to be on library shelves, coming out of bookstores in fancy wrappers, lying beside easychairs everywhere - and they're just sitting there. Now what?

I've been an avid reader since early childhood and read everything from newspapers, Reader's Digest and National Geographic, to mysteries and autobiographies. One day a story just popped into my mind and, lo and behold, a novel was born. But, as I'm sure many of you are aware, that was just the beginning of a long process that ended up, years later, with a real novel being published. Years of writing, then throwing the papers across the room, then trying to find some more to write about, then just about burning the whole thing, then... Sound familiar?

I believe most of us have stories to tell: from our own lives and experiences; from things we've seen, heard and lived; from dreams and ideas that just pop in on dark nights and lazy afternoons. Probably nothing starts a story quite as well as actually being awake when the storm hits and the lighting is flashing or on a quiet morning with a cup of coffee while taking the time to simply see life around us.

Writing takes the courage to put ourselves down on paper where others can criticize and poke fun. It also takes the desire to reach and inspire others with word pictures; pictures that will enable them to see beyond the moment, to go beyond their own space, and to dream. Sometimes, the only thing that keeps us going on the project is that this story, this work of art, is coming from our heart and it simply has to come out and be laid gently, lovingly, even tearfully, on paper where at least we can see it. But, we've kept at it and it's now sitting there, and the question again is, Now what?

I'm not the expert on writing books. I managed to get this first one written (SANCTION) and, with the help of some good people, have gotten it published. Maybe someone will actually buy it some day. Maybe not. But, what I want to do is just put my thoughts down here on paper - my experiences over the past ten years of writing and the past couple of years of publishing and marketing - for those of you who've perhaps started this journey of your own and who might be wondering just what's facing you. How are you going to take this brain-child of yours and get it into the hands of people you know will love it and benefit from it as much as you have? What are you going to experience along this journey and how will you get through the experience with your heart and mind and soul still intact?

So, perhaps the first questions become, How do I write this thing? Is what I've written even readable, any good? How can I make this something that readers will accept and enjoy? And, I believe the answer to that question is pretty simplistic:

Write the very best book you possibly can.

Yeah, I know. Pretty simple. Don't we all do just that? Write the very best...? But, do we?

Eventually you're going to want to put this creation into the hands of an agent or editor, a publisher, a printer, and have it become a real book. But, what does it really look and sound like as it is right now? Have you actually read your own creation, from front to back, like a real book? Is it really the best you can do?

You've built a new birdhouse, but when you hang it in the tree and a bird lands on it, it flips over and scares the bird half to death. You've baked the perfect pie for the contest, but when the judge (or your family) tastes it, you see a certain look on their face of... Well, they didn't look very... happy? Maybe you should have actually tested (tasted?) your creation before you applied for the patent or sent it to Good Housekeeping?

It's the same with your book. When you finally write The End on the last page, you can rightfully sit back and take a break. Be proud. Caress it lovingly as it sits on the table. Just look at it for a day or a month, and think, I did it. I actually finished. However, despite the time and agony that's gone into bringing the child to birth, the real struggle now begins. When you suddenly discover that there's a child going to appear in a few months, you know you're going to go through some struggles and pain getting to the end. But, when that child is finally born, the pain is not over. It definitely is not. Now you're going to discover that there are years and years of stuff that you're going to have to go through to get this child from its beginnings to the time when you can nudge it out the door with some confidence that it will survive. It's the same with your book.

After you've spent a little time recuperating from the birth of your baby, it's time to pick up your pencil again (I know! I know!) and start:

Self-Editing

One note to begin: Whenever I mention your "book," I also mean your single poem or article or short story, whatever you're in the process of writing.

This is the time you will pick up your manuscript (as the publishers will now call it) and tear it apart and re-do it. (Screams of agony are heard wafting through the ether.) But, it's either you do it or they will. And it's going to be hard enough getting a new work into a publisher's hands even if it's perfect, so your job now is to make it the absolutely best manuscript you possibly can - so that it will be looked at.

Publishers literally have thousands of manuscripts cross their desks - maybe even dozens and hundreds daily. Why are they going to look at yours? Did you know there are upward of 300,000 titles published each year now? That's almost 30,000 titles per month. Did you also know that almost half of the population does not read any books at all? This despite the fact that in a general size bookstore there are anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000 books on display, and books are now in grocery stores, car washes and gas stations, on the Internet and in major book "stores" such as WalMart.com (at dirt cheap prices.) Consumers will spend multiple billions of dollars purchasing books each year, yet the chances of any one book being purchased, especially a new one from a new author, are less than 3 out of 10,000.

This is the kind of competition you're going up against, so are you prepared?

A publisher has fifty manuscripts come across his desk today. He sees one that is scruffy, on plain white paper, smudged, and with two typos and mis-spellings in the first paragraph. The one right under that has a soft, colored cover with the title in huge letters and a sub-title that seems to say this is an exciting story. It's well typed in a font that is easily read and is on a soft, beige paper. Which one do you think he's going to even begin to look at?
Sorry. Facts of life in the book publishing world.

As he begin reeding, he find a dry story with looooong, rambeling, paragrahs, words mis-speled, and gramer, and punctation, that keeps him wundering what it meens, rather thn alowing him too simply reed the story. How long would you continue to read a story consisting of sentences like the last one? Yet, this is often the first introduction they have to our new works.

So, the first thing you are going to do (NOT a suggestion) is to get comfortable with a couple of red pencils at hand with all the time in the world available and READ your own manuscript. Brutally. Viciously. And from the printed page, not the computer screen.

Reading from the computer is all right for drafting your work and for quick proofing, but it does not allow you to view your work as a manuscript - a book. It's usually too cramped. You don't see a whole page at once. It has to keep moving for you to continue. You have to keep pushing buttons or pushing around a mouse to keep things going. And it doesn't hold and feel like a book. Once you've actually finished the writing and have done some basic proofing and editing (spell and grammar checking), you need to invest in a ream of half-decent paper and print out the entire manuscript, preferably in "book format."

I learned that the hard way and had corrections to make that at first I just did not catch. To me, book format is converting the normal "portrait" style printed page to a horizontal, or "landscape" view, then making it into two columns per page, and printing it out so when you hold it to read, it looks and feels like a book.

One more point to consider before we go any further with this. If you've written your work by pen or pencil or have used an actual typewriter, is there any way you can get the whole thing converted to a computer and a decent word processing program? You're going to want to go through your manuscript a number of times making corrections and changes, and on a computer this is simply not a problem. A manually written or typed manuscript is going to be a major negative from the very beginning because you know already how much work it's going to take to make the corrections and do all the re-writing.

Borrow a computer, use the one at the library, have a friend enter it into a computer for you. Anything - but please, get it into an electronic format that will keep you from being afraid to work on it. With a computer, you can make a copy to start with and make all your changes initially on the copy. Save the original for your peace of mind. Even if you have to pay someone to "compute" your manuscript for you, it will be worth its weight in gold when you have to start turning your manuscript into a book. If you have it in a computer and on a decent word processing program like Word or WordPerfect, when you want or need to check the spelling and grammar you just push a button and sit back to let it do its thing. Please - get it on a computer. You won't regret it.
(Besides, almost all publishers now will REQUIRE that your work come to them in electronic format.)


Care to comment? Write to me at JimMagwood@aol.com.
And visit my website at http://www.JimMagwood.com.