Okay, Now What? My First Experience with Traditional Publishing

To be honest, my first experience with traditional publishing has been stressful— “harrowing” is the word that always comes to mind. I looked in to “harrowing” and found that it means “acutely distressing.” This sounds about right.

The problem is the waiting. And the lack of feedback. Once you start getting a few form rejection letters, you start to wonder. Is there something I should be doing to fix my book or to increase my chances of finding an agent? And the problem is, there is no one to answer your question. Sure, there is plenty of advice online, but so much of it is conflicting and you are never sure if any of it really applies to your writing.

In the end, if you are anything like me, you are just left wondering and obsessing about what to do.

When I finished my first science fiction book, though, I was relieved. Part of it was that I finally knew I could do it. I had been wanting to write a book my whole life, but other things had always come up. So, I had proven to myself that I could do it. Good.

But I also felt like I had done the thing—I was finished, done—the hard part was over. Everything else would just take care of itself, right?

Yeah…I was wrong.

I soon learned that finishing your book is only the first part of the whole process. Now, you have to publish it.

Of course, I could self-publish, but I wanted to try the traditional publishing route first.

I am lucky enough to know a professional science fiction writer, so I checked with him for advice first. I am very glad I did.

Here is a paraphrase of what he told me. I’ll pass it on to you, in the hopes that it will help other writers in a similar situation to mine:

1. Register your manuscript before you show it to an agency or publisher. You can do this by getting a copyright or registering it with the WGAw (Writers Guild of America West) (this is cheaper and faster).
2. Since your work is SF, go to the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association) website to find resources on how to find an agent. [I’ll get into more on this in a future post].
3. Good luck!

This was exactly the advice I needed at the time, so I set to it.

To register your work with the WGAw, click here.  

Also, if you are a science fiction, fantasy, or even a horror writer, the SFWA has so many helpful resources. Check out their For Writers page.

But to be honest, as someone completely new to the whole process of traditional publishing, all the resources at the SFWA were overwhelming, to say the least.

I soon found out that I would have to create lists of agents that might want my work. I would have to do research on each of them, not only to see if they would be a good fit for me but also to see if they were a legitimate agent that was good at their job. Plus, I had to do all of this to avoid scammers that just wanted my money. Researching an agent is a whole process, so I’ll make a future post on how to research an agent.

But even after that, I discovered that there is a whole list of new writing genres that I would have to learn to persuade an agent to represent me.

First, you have to write query letters, which are often the only thing that catches their attention and differentiates your work from the piles of others in their inbox. It’s very likely that when you submit your work to an agent, it will be opened by an assistant who may only look at your query letter. Only then will they decide whether it is worth their time to read your actual writing. So, getting a query letter right is an art form all by itself, and one that is worth your time. Check out my post on query letters to see what I’ve found that will help you save some time.

I also learned that many agents ask what other works are comparable to your own. These are known as “comps.” This was an alien concept to me. I read a lot of science fiction, but part of the reason that I write is that I want to write something that I haven’t read before. So, I hadn’t really ever thought of my writing like this before. For me, it was a hard mental shift going from the artistic mindset of a writer to the marketing mindset about my own work. Really, this is something I am still working on.

Here’s my advice on comps. First, do your best on your own to figure out what writing is like yours. Then, find test readers that you trust and ask them what kind of writing they think it is. Sure, it might be science fiction, but is it hard science fiction, space opera, cyberpunk, steampunk, or something else? I’ve found that it’s hard to determine this in my own writing, but it can be obvious to another reader.

Another struggle I had with comps is they want you to find works that’ve been published in the past 3 years. I tend to read widely. At that point I was reading more classic science fiction like The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin and The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman, both published in 1974. These books wouldn’t do for comps. The idea is that an agent wants to see where your book will fit in with other works that have been successful. Basically, they want to be sure your book will sell today, not in 1974.

So, I had to update my reading game. Because one thing you want to avoid is taking guesses or saying that your writing is like this and this author, but you have never actually read them. The agent you are talking to will likely be familiar with their work. They’ll be disappointed or annoyed if your writing ends up being nothing like the works from your comps. So, it’s important to take the time to read a few pieces by the authors you use in your comps. This way you are more likely to appear professional and like you know what you are talking about.

But where to start? This is where I may have gone slightly wrong. But it has led me to some great reading. My first guess is that my book was space opera, and it might be, at least in part. (For more on the works that influenced my book, check out my post).

Like a good little student, I did my research and found that two of the big names in recent space opera literature were authors that I had heard a lot about, but I hadn’t had the chance to check out yet: Alastair Reynolds and John Scalzi. Now I had a mission, and I set out to check out their books. I’ll do a future post that will review books by these two excellent science fiction authors.

But under the assumption that I had written a space opera book, I sent out a few rounds of query letters to agents. It was only after these went out that my son read my book and gave me the best description I’ve heard so far: it was cyberpunk with a fantasy vibe.

I knew instantly that he was right, and I realized just how off my first guess of space opera was. Really, though, probably both are accurate in part. My current theory is that my book is a fusion of space opera and cyberpunk with a fantasy vibe. Of course, now that means I have a new science fiction subgenre to research and catch up on, so I’ll post more on these authors later.

But all this means that I was marketing my work all wrong. This may be messing up my efforts to find an agent. I was probably sending my work to the wrong agents. Also, my son’s new description of my novel just sounds so much catchier than just calling it “space opera.” Maybe this switch will catch those assistants’ attention and now they’ll read the beginning of my book?

But so far, my whole experience in this process has been one of trial and error, and I can only hope that I am getting closer to getting it right.

I’ll continue posting more on this as I learn more. I’ll also make posts about the tips I have learned on writing query letters, a book synopsis, author bios, how to find an agent, and some of the excellent resources I have found along the way.

Of course, I haven’t actually found an agent or published my book yet. So, I am definitely not an expert on these topics, but I can share what I have found so far from reputable sources in the hopes that it will help other writers in this same situation save some time and effort.

After all, we can’t spend all our time selling our books, right? We should probably be writing a bit, too.

Please leave me some comments below to let me know if this has been helpful, or if you have some tips of your own to pass my way.

Until the next scene break.