First Draft to Pitch Ready: The Complete Guide to Getting Published
Today I'm going to be sharing with you the complete guide to getting published; to getting your first draft pitch ready.
You have a book idea and you're ready to write, or maybe you're even well on your way to getting it done. But how do you actually get published? Because writing is one thing and getting published is another.
In this post I'm going to share seven must knows for getting that book that you're writing or that you've written on shelves.
Get ready because this is the complete guide to getting published.
It took me six years from when I started writing my novel, When You Read This, to when I actually got a literary agent and she sold it to a publisher. The reason is that I didn't know what I was doing.
I had an idea and I had a goal, but I was really just hobbling together the steps to figure out how to actually write a novel, how to write a good novel, how to get a literary agent.
I had a whole bunch of rewrites. I spent ages trying to find an agent and I queried my current agent three different times before she agreed to represent me.
So I want to share with you what I learned from this experience and what I would've done differently if I could do it all over again. I'm going to break it down here into seven steps.
Step #1: Write your draft
Your first step may be obvious, but it's to write the draft. You're probably thinking, duh, but the simple truth is that you can't do any of the other stuff I'm going to say, the stuff you need to do to get published, without the actual book.
And people do ask me that sometimes. They say, "Can I publish just an idea for a book?" Yes, you probably could if you were Michelle Obama, but not a novel. I think even Michelle Obama would have to write the novel first.
So if you're writing a novel, that starts with a first draft. Sounds obvious, but I can't tell you how many writers I talk to who are asking me about finding an agent or how to pitch their book, which is like step 10 when they're on step two.
Step #2: Set it aside
After you have your draft, the next step is to set it aside. I know this is going to be really hard for some people, especially if you're a person who tends to want to reread what you wrote as soon as you finish writing it.
And trust me, I've been there, but pro tip: don't do it. I really advise that you give your draft some space when you have finished the first one.
When you give yourself space from your work—and I'll usually step away anywhere from three to six weeks—it allows you to establish some creative and emotional distance from the draft so you can come back to it and revise from a more objective perspective.
If you're reading your work and you absolutely love it or absolutely hate every word, it's a good sign that you need a little more time away from your draft.
So what I'll do is I'll come back and if I love it, if I think, this is brilliant, I don't see anything that needs to change, which to be fair, that happens rarely, or if I come back and I think, oh, this is just absolute crap. I shouldn't even be a writer. Why did I even write this? This is embarrassing. Nothing is salvageable. It's too early.
And just a word of warning, I pretty much always go through that phase on everything I write. I go through a phase of thinking it's absolutely terrible and I should just scrap it.
Now I know that's just part of the process. It doesn't mean it's actually bad. It doesn't mean I actually need to throw it away. It means I haven't let enough time go by before I've started trying to revise, and time usually fixes that problem.
At some point I'll come back and I'll read it almost like it's someone else's work. I'll see things that I like, and I'll see things that I don't like.
You may have heard the story about Stephen King throwing his novel, Carrie in the trash and his wife finding it and pulling it out and reading it and saying, "What are you doing? This is good."
I love that story because I think it shows that this process of at some point thinking this is terrible is pretty common, maybe even universal for writers.
He thought it was awful, but he was wrong. So if you come back and think it's awful, it's probably just too early.
Step #3: Revise it
Step three is to revise it. After some time has gone by, you need to revise. I can almost guarantee that your first draft will not be perfect.
Yes. We all dream of writing the perfect first draft, but most of us never do that. Like I said, I wrote my first novel maybe 12 to 13 times. But that was an exception because I truly didn't know what I was doing.
But I now know that revision is just part of the process. It's good to do it. It's a necessary step when it comes to writing a draft that people are going to want to read.
So give yourself the space and freedom to try stuff and make changes and experiment when you're revising in service of your story.
I've found that a lot of the aha moments I've discovered in my writing happen when I'm revising. They come out of the revision process.
Once I've essentially fleshed out a sketch of a possible version of my story in that first draft, I can then more clearly tinker with other new possibilities and add some exciting stuff when I'm revising.
When I was revising my first book, When You Read This, friends and family and acquaintances would sometimes ask, "What's your novel about?" And I would tell them that six months after the protagonist has died, her former boss finds a manuscript that she's left for him with a note asking him to publish it.
So at the time I was getting manuscript requests from agents who would all eventually pass on my novel and I couldn't figure out what was missing to make the story really pack the emotional punch that I wanted.
But after years into drafting and revising, it occurred to me one afternoon that it needed one more something in the last third.
It needed another story complication, and it hit me that it was a flicker of romance, but I didn't think of that in the first draft. I didn't even think of it in the second or third draft. I had to get well into revision to get that aha moment for my story.
Step #4: Get feedback
Step four is to get feedback on your revised draft and revise again.
Okay, I can feel you seething at me through your computer screen, but yes, you almost certainly need to revise more than once.
The first time around, it's healthy for you as the storyteller to see how far you can get it on your own, because you're going to find some obvious things. You want to change some low hanging fruit. You don't need other people to point these things out to you because you know you want to change them.
But once you've done that, it's really helpful at that point to get another set of eyes, or even better, a few sets of eyes on your work.
You want to be thoughtful about who you choose to read it though. You probably don't need more than three people. Multiple opinions are good, but too many opinions can be overwhelming.
I want you to choose people who you trust and that enjoy reading the type of story you've written. Ideally, the kind of people who maybe even understand the conventions of that genre.
You also want to give them guidance on what kind of feedback you're looking for. You want them to answer thoughtful questions about story or character things you want to know rather than saddling you with their own value judgements, like whether something is good or bad or whether they just liked it or didn't like it.
Tell them what you're looking for so that you can assess the feedback they're giving you and incorporate what you agree with or that you feel is correct into your next draft while ignoring what you don't want.
Just a quick pro tip: all feedback is not automatically correct, just because it's feedback.
The only feedback that's right is feedback that makes you excited to incorporate it, that energizes you, and that feels like it is going to make the story your're writing better.
Step #5: Figure out where you book fits
All right, now we're getting into the publishing side of things. Step five is to figure out where your book fits in the world.
This is where the good stuff starts. Just kidding. Hopefully the writing and revising process, while not always easy, has been fun so far.
This is not something you need to be thinking about while you're still writing your draft, but it's good to keep in mind when you're looking for agents to query and are figuring out how to present your book to them.
To do that, you're going to have to learn where your book fits in the publishing world. If you ask someone to decide what shelf your book would go on in the bookstore, where would they put it?
For example, my novel Privilege is considered contemporary fiction. Some might call it college fiction or women's fiction because the protagonist is a woman and I'm a woman author. It just depends.
Are you writing a thriller? Are you writing a romance? Where does this book belong on the shelves?
Step #6: Find out who represents your style of book
All right, we're at step six. Once you figure out where your book fits in the publishing world, you want to figure out who represents those books, and I mean literary agents.
A literary agent is who is going to connect you to your publisher and sell your book. When your book is in the shape it needs to be in order to start pitching to literary agents, you'll need to figure out a few things, among them being which agents you want to pitch.
As I've said in some of my other videos, research is really important here because you'll want to save yourself a lot of time, energy, and heartache by querying literary agents who are interested in the book you are pitching and not anyone else.
Okay, but do you know what they want? Well, they'll usually tell you on their website. They'll tell you exactly what to send to them. Whether it's 10 pages of your draft or 30 chapters of your draft, they'll tell you exactly what to send.
If you're still wondering how to find these people in the first place, a great way to start is by finding out who represents the authors of the books similar to yours by looking in the acknowledgement section of the book.
The writer is usually going to thank their agent there, and then you have a name you can Google and see what submissions they're taking and what to send.
Step #7: Start pitching
And step seven. Our final step is to start pitching and know how to sell yourself. This is usually the scariest part. Honestly, it was for me, if only because some rejection is guaranteed and rejection never feels good.
Let's be honest, no one wants to get rejected, but you need to do it if you want an agent. And the more effort you put in to figuring out how to make yourself and your book stand out from the crowd, the fewer headaches you'll get in the querying process.
A huge part of querying literary agents successfully is cracking the best way to present your book. You can write an amazing book, but not know how to make it sound appealing.
It's going to be hard to get an agent interested enough to ask to read part of it or all of it and see how great it is if you don't know how to pitch it.
It reminds me of the recent social media trend, Explain a Book Plot Badly. Which of these gives you a clear sense of this book's vibe and appeal? Dracula meets Dawson's Creek, or, a vampire with a sun sensitivity issue falls in love with an awkward girl with low self-esteem.
These are two descriptions of Twilight, by the way, but see the difference? The first is so much better than the second.
How much can you make on your book?
So you've taken all these steps to get published, but maybe you're wondering, how much can I actually make on my book if I get a book deal?
This is a very good question, because there's very little data out there unless you're a publishing industry insider. It's actually a pretty hard answer to find. So I decided to find out.
I compiled data from over 1400 published authors and found average and median book advances based on all kinds of metrics, including genre, whether it was their first book, whether they had an agent and who their publisher was.
And I've put it all together in a free workshop, which you can watch right now by just clicking below. So click the link below to find out everything you want to know about current book advances and what you can realistically expect to make on your book.
If you're serious about becoming a professional author, this is a must watch. You won't find this data laid out anywhere else. So click below and you can watch this totally free workshop right now.
