Publishing 101: You Wrote the Book. Now What?

I haven't been in publishing for long. A few years only, but I learned a lot in those short years. It also helps that I have lots of fellow author friends who have made mistakes, same as me, in their road to publication. To prevent you from making mistakes, and to maybe show you the path to getting that book published, I will share with you a few things that I learned.

Here you are, an aspiring author with a finished WIP (work in progress). You think writing was the hard part. Ha! You shell learn from that mistake right away. Writing itself is easy. You open the word document and type. To make it make sense, to have a complete compelling plot with great characters is harder. To actually sell that is even more so. To sell, your book needs to fit in and stand out at the same time. Let me explain that: It needs to fit into what publishers are looking for, needs to be the same style, genre, ect. But it also needs to stand out. It needs to be different, better, than anything out there. See! That's not so easy.

Once the writing is done, the real work begins. First, you need to figure out where to send the book. Before, there used to be only one option: Traditional publishing. Now, a few new doors have opened known as e-publishing and self-publishing.

Do you know which one is better? Which is the right decision? Hint: all three are right, and wrong. The trick is to find the one that fits you best. While one person can be made for traditional, another can be perfect for self-publishing.

Come back next week to learn about all three options and possibly see which one fits you best.

If you're published, which was harder for you: The writing or everything that followed after 'The End'?