Tips on Getting Published, Part 1
At my university, I received a publishing mentor who taught me about authorship in today’s publishing industry. I realize a lot of people don’t have that opportunity, so I’m going to publish advice I’ve received from my mentor and my personal author journey.
OP note: I am NOT giving you writing advice, or advice on how to set up a writing routine. This post is meant to aid writers who already have that down and are eager for, but unsure of, publishing.
DO NOT SKIP THIS PART. IT IS LITERALLY VITAL, YOU HAVE NO IDEA.
When people think of authors, they often think of the George Eliots and Emily Dickensons, the aloof, mysterious author who publishes from the shadows and is only heard of through their work. The reality is that you can no longer get published with this strategy today. I mean maybe you can, it’ll just be 10x harder. Sure, Anne Rice can afford to not use social media for her contact, but she can do that because she’s Anne Rice. Modern authors today are accessible, speak on TV and radio, attend writing conventions, perform spoken word, and run social media accounts, websites, blogs. You can easily find them. There’s a reason for this.
Contrary to popular belief, many publishers are constantly scouring the web and conventions for new authors. They will mainly publish authors who already have a following, and who are already established as legitimate authors. If they can’t FIND you, then they won’t KNOW ABOUT you, and you won’t get any offers. In fact, BOTH ME AND MY PUBLISHING MENTOR WERE OFFERED PUBLISHING OPPORTUNITIES OVER SOCIAL MEDIA. That’s right. She was offered a book deal on Instagram, and I was contacted by a publisher right here on Tumblr.
So how do publishers weed through all the social media accounts and think, “I’m interested in learning about this person”? They know by the author avatar. An author avatar is the persona you display to your readership. It doesn’t have to be a completely different person than you are (in fact, most authors are basically just themselves), but it must be the aspect of your personality that you want your readers to think of when they think about you. It will be the part of you that publishers see when they’re considering giving you a deal.
These are tips on how to establish your author persona.
You are not an aspiring author, you’re not a young author, you’re not a beginner, novice, or future writer. You’re an author. Stop underestimating yourself. People will not take you seriously if you don’t take yourself seriously.
This concept may seem weird to writers, because we’re so used to the mindset of “One day I’ll be an author, but I’m not right now”. In addition, many people believe that you need to receive money for your work to be considered a published author. This actually isn’t true. Have you published work in a school newspaper? You’re published. Many publishers will count this, as it gives you the experience of submitting your work and going through an editing process. Have you self-published? You’re an author. Posted on a blog? Author. Written fan fiction on DeviantArt? Author. Have you traded your work with someone? Trading is really big in the self-publishing industry, so consider yourself an author.
Change you Instagram or Twitter description, right now. You’re an author. Period.
2. Your genre needs to be more specific than the one you have in your head right now.
When people ask “What do you write?” they’re actually asking for not only your genre, but your sub-genre, your writing themes, and your intended audience. Publishers and fellow writers want to know ALL of these things.
Steven King doesn’t just write horror. He writes supernatural fiction horror and suspense psychological thrillers for adults. My publishing mentor Meliza Bañales marketed her book Life Is Wonderful, People Are Terrific as a queer chicana punk 90′s young adult feminist coming-of-age story. I shit you not, she included that many words.
It’s okay to write multiple genres, but you need to pinpoint EXACTLY what you write, who you write it for, and what kind of themes your story explores. This proves that your story will appeal to a wide, but specific range of audiences.
3. Choose a social media persona and stick with it.
Your persona is the part of you that you over-dramatize, in a sense, to your audience. It can be related to your genre, or not, but it should ideally appeal to your intended audience. For example, one of my friends and fellow writers wrote a ten-chapter Star Wars fan fiction, so she decided to emphasize her persona as the hopeless romantic nerd who’s in love with every character in the franchise. She now attends the Disney College Program, which has a 7% admittance rate, lower than most Ivy Leagues. If you think about it, that’s exactly the kind of person Disney wants: Someone so interested and bubbly about their work that they know everything about it and will talk about it all the time.
Here’s another example: Konstantinos, the author of Nocturnal Witchcraft, has a very specific gothic kind of aesthetic, which you can see not only from his website, but also his book covers. That style appeals to many people, including me, who picked up Gothic Grimoire because it caught my eye in a used bookstore.
If your current accounts are too personalized, or use a name you’d rather not have as your pen name, I recommend creating another account strictly for your author persona.
Social media is about showing off yourself. People will want to become friends with you. They’ll trust you, follow you, fall in love with you, and they’ll buy your writing because it’s your writing. That may be hard to imagine, but it’s true.
5. Create an author resume.
Authors will oftentimes create special resumes that detail their experience as the author they want to be seen as. In this resume, only include the things that will help buffer you as an author. This will also help you update your author bio/cover letters.
For example, I work as a janitor right now. Though I might put that on my regular resume, that doesn’t appear very author-y based on what I write. However, I can include that I’ve worked in a spice and tea shop for five years. This proves that I have a basic knowledge of herbalism and natural health benefits, which is big in the new age publishing industry.
You DO NOT have to include everything you write. I know a writer who runs a blog about taking care of dogs, and it has a solid following. However, that doesn’t relate to what she normally publishes, which are murder mysteries. So while she does run this blog, it doesn’t fit in with her regular author avatar, so she doesn’t include it in her resume or author bio. Speaking of which:
6. Master the author bio.
The author bio is the paragraph next to the author photo you see on the back of the book. It’s one of the first things readers look at when they pick up a work. So yes, it’s important. Author bios are included on books, magazines, blogs (yes, certain blogs publish people), anthologies, zines–pretty much any published work. These paragraphs should summarize your persona, your achievements, and your work in less than 100 words. You have to include an author bio for every single submission, so master it now.
Where you are now (usually where you live)
(OPTIONAL) What you’re working on right now
Your author bio will change over time as you find new things to update it with. That’s fine. But the format of an author bio will always remain the same. Here’s an example of one of mine:
Yunan Kirkbride is an author and zinester earning her BA in Writing at the University of California, San Diego. She has published online witchcraft lessons on M-School as well as the zine Death Witchcraft: Volume 1. A practicing witch for over ten years, she runs an advice blog on modern witchcraft and NeoPaganism, as well as her Etsy shop DeathWitchZines. Her nonfiction work focuses on the 21st-century witch and underground cultural societies. In her free time, you can find her buying pink bows for her hair or communicating with the dead. She lives in San Diego.
Author bios are usually in third person, although depending on the context, some publishers and bosses may want you to write them in first person. You can get creative with the tone here: make it funny, cheeky, whatever fits with your author avatar.
7. You are always working on something.
Even if you’re not. Literally, if people ask, just make something up. Ideally you should be writing as often as you can, but let’s be real, sometimes life gets in the way or we’re so focused on publishing nonsense that we haven’t worked in a while.
Writers often change their work in the middle of writing it, so no one will blame you if you end up falling through. The only time this ISN’T the case is in writing author proposals. Proposals usually detail large products or books that you send in to a publisher or editor, and your project MUST MUST MUST stick to that proposal. This goes for every proposal except screenwriting, since those stories change multiple times before the film is even shot. But I will get to that in a later post.
Feel free to add, feel free to respond, especially with experiences of your own. I am not the know-all, end-all of publishing, but this is what I’ve been taught, and it’s transformed me from a writer to a published author making money off of her work within a couple months. If you have any other questions, ask me, email me, hit me up on Insta, whichever way you prefer. Happy writing!!!
