This post by Susan Malone originally appeared on her Malone Editorial Services site on 8/6/14.
Traditional publishing is in the toilet. Big news flash, right? I lined out some of the whys in my recent guest blog on Authorlink.com.
But what can we learn from big publishers’ successes and failures? A lot. So let’s dive in and today talk about the thing new writers are missing all over the place—putting the product, the book, first.
This really does seem like a no-brainer. I mean, we’re writers, right? It’s what we do—we write, we hone our craft, we study, we get critiqued, we write some more. At least, that’s the way it used to be!
One of the issues new writers (and many seasoned ones as well, although they handle it differently) have with the Traditional folks is that this takes f o r e v e r. Yep, it does. At every single stage of the process, writers get to hurry-up-and-wait. Hurry up and produce exactly what that agent, editor, etc., requests, and then sit on their hands for months and wait on responses. It can drive a sane woman batty. I’m in the process of getting one of my great YA writers agented, and of course, as it’s August and all of publishing is on vacation, my writer is frustrated that the agent won’t read his work until September. Hey! That’s actually quick!
Read the full post on Malone Editorial Services.