Getting Yourself Published

You know the adage that goes "it's not what you know, but who you know"? I think that may be more of a truism than an adage (although, frankly, I'm not sure I could tell you the difference between the two.)

I've written a book aimed at the Middle Grade audience (no, not Hobbits...that's Middle Earth). It's a good book, a historical adventure set aboard a sailing ship in 1727. You can find a chapter of it at my website,www.reinharthouse.com.

It turns out, however, that writing the book was the easy part. Getting the thing sold...ah, there's the rub!

The first step in selling your book is to go to the bookstore and see what else on the shelf is similar to yours. You do this for two reasons; to test your commercial viability and to write down the names of the publishers. Chances are you'll see a book remarkably similar to yours; a potential commercial viability problem. If you don't see a kissing cousin to your book on the shelves, jot down the names of the publishers of those that are similar to yours.

Logic would dictate that you then approach the publisher with your book. No so fast! Publishers will all tell you they don't accept submissions from regular folks. Can you imagine how many shlocky manuscripts would come flooding through their doors? Instead, the publishers will tell you they much, much prefer to look at your work when submitted by a literary agent.

Now your task is to find one of those. There are many good online resources. I found three that were extremely helpful:
www.AgentQuery.Com - They have a nifty search engine that lets you find agents by genre, by location, and a variety of other variables. Their site is easy to use, too.
www.QueryTracker.Com - You can set up a listing of the agents you've queried, and track your results. The site runs a little slow, but they have over 1,100 agents in their database.
www.LitMatch.Com - I've only used this site a couple of times, but their information is good. It took me a while to get the joke;you see, they match up literary elements, like writers to agents. The result is a Lit(erary) Match. Hot, huh?

Next, you've got to write your query letter. You'll find a lot of references for that, too. Google "how to query a literary agent". There's a lot of information on the web about what to do and what to avoid.

Finally, get to work. It's not easy to send out a stream of queries. Make sure you look at each one before you send it...I sent out a dozen with an enormous typo in the middle. Remember that each query you send is all the agent will know of you. A big typo in the middle of your query makes you look like an idiot.

You need to send out roughly a gajillion queries. You'll see a bazillion rejections. Don't worry. Every no will eventually lead to a yes. One of them will come back from an agent who is interested in your book. But you won't find that agent if you don't keep focused, and keep sending out queries.

Eventually, you'll find an agent that will work with you. She'll represent you to a publisher, and you'll be on your way. But the publisher looks at your work not because of the work itself, but because the agent is there to represent you.

See? It's not what you know, it's who!