i think the thread says it all. im just curious and i would like to know about your personal experiences going through the whole process.
Why I'm sure people have, but as has come up before you won't get much information beyond a simple google search. Specific questions can be asked, and hopefully answered, in the publisher section. So to answer yes some have, but they won't be spilling their royalties.
Yes, I have had work published. If you're considering it, the best characteristics you'll need is patience and perseverence. You won't meet success immediately. It took me about a year of writing seriously and submitting before I got my first acceptance. But it's worth it. Definitely worth it.
in my old writing-for-money life, i had a variety of things published/produced for pay, including short stories, poetry, song lyrics, ad copy, etc.... and in my 'maia' life, since i stopped writing for money, i allowed much of my work to be published for free... the process is simple, but not easy... and it's gone into at great length and depth in many threads here, as well as on many sites where agents and publishers and authors lay it all out... as noted above, you should browse the 'publishing' section on this site for details...
thanks for your replies. i used the search function and typed a few different keywords and it took me a good 10 minutes to find nothing, so i figured i would just post it myself. im actually not looking to publish my work right now. my plan is to make a name for myself by posting my work for free and hopefully get some kind of an audience who is willing to follow me. i have a vague understanding of how the whole process works and if and when im ready i will do further research. i was actually more interested in your personal experiences. be it success or failure. as Banzai mentioned it took him/her over a year to get some headway. it seems that it worked out very well for him/her. (congratulations ☺) from what ive learned through any type of corporate structure, they will twist and turn their words and make it something it's not. this is another good reason i would like to hear from the people who have been through the process and not someone who is trying to sell me something. ill check out the publishing section like u guys said to do. thanks again for your input.
ShortBus, I have had about a dozen short stories and about a dozen articles published. I've had one novel published through a small publisher with a second scheduled for release November 1st. I am not sure if posting your work for free is the best way to garner an audience. If you're able to get your work published (such as short stories) through quality ezines, you'll get more attention. They already have an audience that visits and supports them. I think you're misinformed about publishers, as a corporate structure, twisting and turning words until a story or novel is no longer what it was. Even if that were the case with some publishers, research would enable you to avoid submitting to them and not have to worry about such a concern. Good luck moving forward. Terry
Yes, my book 'The Hierophant Of 100th Street' was published in 2008. It wasn't easy at first what with all the rejections received from many agents, (some nice and respectable, others downright mean-spirited and supercilious) for reasons due to poor demands of the market. But I had found that getting published in a country that barely reads as much as its previous generations read can be difficult. But I kept at it believing my book to be special and would one day see the light of day. And although my manuscript had been dropped in many of mailboxes, and flung over many transoms for years, it was finally picked up and published by North Atlantic Books. My advise to writers: NEVER GIVE UP! EVER!
I have one novel forthcoming through a small e-publisher and I've had a few pieces published in newspapers over the years. I only started seriously writing a year ago and got extremely lucky with my first book which was picked up within six weeks. I know it's not the same as a traditional publisher but it's still thrilling to be accepted by a publisher, but it did give me a bit of a false idea of how easy it is to get published. Now I'm spruiking my second book and dealing with the agent rejections.... It's only been a month and I know this is just a drop in the ocean in the publishing world, but patience is not my strong point! I just keep reminding myself it can sometimes take years and that I just have to keep believing in what I've written and putting it out there...Easier said than done. I agree with other posters that self-publishing is not the way to go if you want to make a name for yourself. To be brutal there is a lot of garbage out there and the chances of people wading through it all to find your work are small. There's no short cut, you just have to keep plugging away like the rest of us and hope for the best... At the end of the day it's the journey that matters not the destination yada yada yada. I've been well and truly bitten by the writing bug now and couldn't stop even if I wanted to but i can't deny that recognition is very important to me too.
I'm planning my novel, but it shall be rather interesting, so I'm hoping to publish this one . Firstly though, I have to finish, unlike the others I have tried..
No advance. I think I get 50% percent of sales, which doesn't amount to much when books sell for $3, but if you sell enough I guess it adds up. At this stage I'm more intersted in building a profile than making money, although some extra $$$ would be nice.
From my understanding (and I'm very new at this) there is a lot of social networking involved... The onus is really on the writer to get out there and market their work these days. It states in my contract that the publisher will have the book reviewed by a number of high profile websites to get the ball rolling, and there are opportunities with my publisher to contribute to their blog and participate in virtual book tours (still not really sure how these work). I'm also planning to get a website, but for someone who doesn't even use Facebook it's all a bit daunting.
Not sure if this should be discussed, or is in the right location. I'm just curious as to how many of you are writing for sheer pleasure, or to get published? Me? I'm just writing for sheer pleasure. I'll likely never publish, and I'm OK with that. I take great joy in crafting fictional worlds and characters and writing them, not caring if the world will ever see them. (I'll keep the publishing option open in the distant future, but I'm not gonna worry about it now. ) So, what about you all, fellow writers? How many of you are writing for sheer pleasure? To get published?
I'm doing it for both...my long term goal is get my current story published in the far future...but for now it's all pleasure really. It's a nice break from all this school work stress, that's for sure
Started off as sheer pleasure of course, but even at the age of 9 I knew I wanted to be published. I've always been an exhibitionist - I want the world to see my work, and I want the world to see how great my work is. I've been that way with my art and it is the same with my writing. I grew up having teachers, friends and my parents tell me what a great little artist I am. At school whenever there's an art project, everyone wanted me on their team - there was even a time when nearly my entire class literally queued by my table just so I'd draw the cover of their Easter card for them (school project). As I went onto A-Level, I sometimes did my art projects in the library, minding my own business, and I'd look up 2 hours later and see five people surrounding my table, admiring my work, asking if I'd draw them something. Sure, I was comparing my art with amateurs, but that glow you feel when someone loves your work is addictive. It doesn't matter whom it comes from, pros or rookies, it just doesn't matter - you simply relish the fact that SOMEBODY loved your work. And you know what, I loved it. Every minute of it, every drop of admiration, of awe, of the attention. I adored it. So, when I discovered writing at the age of 9, the idea that no one would ever see my work never even occurred in my mind. I always knew I had it in me and I would work to reach my goal of publication. I thickened my skin early on to prepare for criticism. I've always written because it is my pure pleasure to do so, just as I drew many pictures because I loved it, but the idea that somebody will see this and love it and admire it comes hand-in-hand with it. For me it is the natural progression of things - it was never a question of "Should I publish, could I publish" but simply that "I will publish" because I have created good work, so why wouldn't I? I would still write if no one ever sees my work, and I would still love every minute of it - but why would I ever not show anyone my work? The idea doesn't make sense to me. I want the world to see my work.
Writing for pleasure and writing to get published are not mutually exclusive. Obviously, getting your novel out there to the masses is a desirable outcome for any writer, even the recreational one. However, I write because I write. Sure I have goals like everyone else, but I feel that trying to justify what with we do with the results we achieve is doing a disservice to our craft.
Both. I fantasize about getting published, but I realize it's a long-shot. So I mostly write for fun and practice. I love it when someone says they enjoyed something I wrote.
My hope is to live off of writing some day, or at least have my writing be a substantial part of my income.
Personally, i aim to have my writing published but it does help to write for pleasure during the journey to publishing. lolz -i laugh every time my parents bug me to finish my book. yes its over 100K now and is still growing, but i don't care its the first draft and will likely be cut down by quite a few thousand words once its cleaned up. (said book is in my signature) the point is -i enjoy writing my book while my parents insist on me finishing ti for publishing. no pressure right? nope -laud back as can be to my parent's exasperation!
Agree with Rebel that they aren't mutually exclusive, so let's just say I wrote for many years without thought of being published, partially for enjoyment and partially to practice and experiment. Now I write what I enjoy with the goal of getting it published.
I write for both reasons. As my forum name implies, I'm a singer, and I'm very good at singing, but I have a fairly serious case of stage fright which makes it hard for me to enjoy performing in public. I still want to communicate with people, though, and writing is a way to do that without having to perform. So I write for publication in that sense. I also write for pleasure, because I like making beautiful things. An artist may paint a picture just to hang on his own wall.
I remember a family gathering - for Christmas, I think it was - when I was 13, and my grandmother asked all of us what we wanted to be. I had already discovered the joy of confronting a loaded typewriter with a blank sheet of paper, and had known for a while that I wanted to be a writer. But an older cousin said, "writer" first, and I told myself that the reason I said something else (engineering, I think) was that I didn't want to appear to be imitating my cousin. It was only later that I realized that the real reason was that, in order to be a writer, one must believe that one has something of value to offer, and at the time, while I loved writing, I did not have the confidence in my ability to produce something of value, something that others should want to read. My first notion that I might actually have something to offer was in my last year of high school, when I served as a page editor on the school newspaper. It was 1971, and there was a fairly high degree of political activism among the students. I wrote an editorial on respectful political discourse and the harm that hard-boiled, emotionally-based ideology did to the process of finding consensus (looking around these days, I guess it didn't take), and a teacher of mine with whom I argued continuously, both in and out of class, praised it to the rest of the class. Still, the idea that I could actually be a published writer was very slow in coming, and really only hit home when I was in my thirties and forties, writing advocacy pieces on behalf of children and adults with disabilities. It was during those years that the idea of writing novels really took root. I began to really study writing and publishing. I wrote a novel, then another, then a couple more. Always with the dream of becoming published. I turn 60 this year. I will be retiring from my career in taxation in two years. I once told a priest, when I was feeling like I had made wrong choices and missed the chance to pursue my dream of writing, that I felt like I had wasted my abilities. He told me to never look back, never worry about what has been or might have been, to focus only on what was possible going forward and to make the most of that. I took the advice to heart. I look back on the four complete novels I've written, and the two incomplete ones, and I realize they served as a learning process and brought great joy to me in the process of their creation. They provided an anchor for me when events pulled me in various directions, and they gave me a sense that, in pursuing them, I was somehow gaining just a little purchase on the star for which I had set my aim. At some point, it all comes together, and the project I am working on now offers, I firmly believe, the best hope for getting published, for reaching a wider audience, for maybe touching someone through the written word. If it turns out not to be, there will be another project, and another, and another. That's my goal.
