Any published authors here?

[b0redom]

As subject really. Any tips? I'm thinking of writing a book.....

[g8ina]

No written but edited / proofed five. three biog, one genealogical, one fiction. We used Trafford Publishing and Lulu.com, all reasonably successful.

If I can help when its writted let me now, I's gud at spelingg and grandm,a.

[wazzickle]

Never published other than some poker journalism but a keen amateur writer and wannabe editor so feel free to send me something and I'll hopefully be able to give useful notes, depending on the subject material.

[Saracen]

Best tip - get a good agent.

Problem - getting a good agent is next to impossible if you're not published.

What you're asking about is an extremely broad question. For instance, if you're thinking of trying to write the next Harry Potter or Da Vinci code, I can tell you for nothing that it's an extremely competitive field.

At the other end is self/vanity publishing. That's dead easy and any talentless no-hoper can do it .... provided they pay up front.

Somewhere in-between is factual books, like travel books, history, or whatever you personal pet passion is. You MIGHT stand a decent chance of getting published IF you know your subject, can write coherently, and can track down the appropriate publisher.


One question to awk yourself, assuming that by "thinking of" writing one, I can infer that you haven't written it yet, is why you want to write one?.

If it's because you think you've got a story to tell, my best advice is to get on with it and write it. Then try approaching agents/publishers. But we warned .... it's you and thousands of others. Publishers are buried in scripts, most of which are unpublishable except as vanity projects.

So you will need :-

a) a damned healthy portion of talent, and
b) a blooming good script, AND
c) a large dose of luck to find a publisher that's read enough of it to fall in love with it.


Ever come across Piers Anthony? Extremely prolific fantasy/scifi author. He must havem oh, 100 books or so now. Yet his accounts of getting published in the first place are harroring, and involve year after year and book after book resulting in rejection letters. But he persisted, and eventually .... has a lottery-jackpot scale event of hitting just the right publisher.


Finally, if the aim is fame and fortune, after all the above comments, let me add that getting published is the easy bit. Yep, it gets gwrder still. Much harder. Getting a publisher to back an unknown author with the kind of marketing spend required to promote a big seller is the real tricky bit.


So my advice? If you want to write a book, write it. It's exceptionally rare for a publisher to have any interest at all in an unknown until you have the finished book, not least because about 99.99% of people with 'a great idea' don't have the skill and dedication needed to turn it into a marketable page-turner.