My boss, the publisher for multiple divisions at Baker Publishing Group, says this often: “The door to publishing is either swinging open, or it’s swinging closed.”
He’s right. If you are a published author or aspire to be one, your chances of publishing are either getting better or worse all the time.
The trick is to keep the door the swinging open. Following are three ways to do that.
Platform. Keep expanding your platform, your ability to find exposure for your work. This can sound daunting, but it needn’t be. Building a platform takes time. Resign yourself to that, decide it’s important (it is), and then block off time each week to work on it.
Read books and blogs about it. Try something new on your blog or Facebook page. Set aside time to compose excellent tweets. Start saving for a good website design.
Also, think about how to sustain your energy for this work. Do you have some friends whose help you can enlist? Is there somebody you should host to lunch? And what’s your mission in all this? There’s nothing like a clear sense of mission to keep you going for the long haul.
Concept. I remember a conversation with an agent about the concept an author was pursuing. The last time this author and I had spoken, we had talked about one concept. “It’s not big enough,” this agent was telling me. “We’re going to save that one for later. Instead, we’re doing this,” and the agent proceeded to knock my socks off with the concept they had settled on.
Concept is just hugely important. I recommend keeping a running list of book ideas. Brainstorm a list and then keep adding to or removing from it as you interact with other people about them.
Concept is so important, in fact, that if you pick the right one and pair it with excellent writing, you can steal past the platform bugaboo, and use your book to build your platform! The wrong concept can hurt you in at least two ways. It can send publishers packing, or, if the concept is contracted, the resulting book can fail to sell, and that hurts you too, which brings me to my last point.
Sales. Getting published can be the worst thing you can do for your writing career. How? If your book does not sell well, you will likely have a hard time getting a second contract. A really hard time. Here’s why. Book buyers have long memories. If we sell your book to an account, and it immediately starts sucking the retail exhaust pipe, that account will remember. If we bring your next book to that same account, the account is likely to say no thanks or reduce the purchase significantly.
Publishing is a sacred trust between author and publisher, and it’s just true that publishers need authors to help move their books. When an author chooses to take a three-month European sabbatical as her book is releasing, that hurts sales. We can’t stop authors from doing this, of course, but we won’t be excited to publish your next one.
Work hard to promote and sell your book because the converse of the above is also true. Books that perform well in the marketplace give you all kinds of leverage the next time around. Publishers will be clamoring for your next one.
What are you doing to keep the door to publishing swinging open?
