The path to publishing your novel: a step-by-step guide to the publication process for first-time authors

Step 1: Understanding the role of agents, publishers and self-publishing platforms

Okay. So. You’ve written your novel. You’ve edited, polished, redrafted and tweaked. You’ve sent it out to trusted friends and family for feedback, and you’re as sure as you can be that it’s ready to go.

Now what?

The world of publishing can seem like a confusing, forbidden landscape to emerging authors. It’s filled with bewildering terminology and an overwhelming set of rules that you’re just expected to know, on pain of instant rejection.

But it doesn’t have to be intimidating. Over the next few posts, I’m going to go through some of the key steps involved in navigating the publishing process, and look at how you can give yourself the best chance of success. 

Like all industries, the publishing world has its own language, jargon, and vernacular. Getting to grips with the phraseology is the first step in finding your way through the process.

Getting to grips with the language of publishing

First things first: let’s get some terminology out of the way.

• Publishers are the companies that ultimately decide which books get published. These can be large, global corporations or small independent presses with no more than one or two employees.
• Agents are intermediaries between authors and publishers. They represent authors, negotiate contracts, and advocate for their clients. Agents can be independent or work as part of a literary agency.
• Advances are the payments made to authors by publishing companies on publication of the book.
• Royalties are the percentage of profit an author receives from the sale of each book.
• Manuscripts (often abbreviated to MS) are unpublished books.
• Unsolicited submissions are submissions that come directly from the author (i.e. not via an agent).​
• Simultaneous submissions are submissions that go out to multiple agents or publishers at a time. It used to be common practice that agents and publishers would not accept simultaneous submissions (i.e. they wanted to be the only party considering the manuscript until they’d made a decision) but that has largely died out in recent years. It’s still essential to make sure you’re familiar with an agent or publisher’s submission terms before submitting – don’t assume anything.

Like all industries, the publishing world has its own language, jargon, and vernacular. Getting to grips with the phraseology is the first step in finding your way through the process.

Traditional publishing vs. self-publishing

Before you begin your publishing journey, you have a decision to make: what route do you want to take? Do you want to attract the interest of a publishing house (or an agent and then a publishing house) and go down the traditional publishing path? Or do you want to cut out the middleman and go it alone? It’s a significant decision, and not one you should rush.

Traditional publishing involves submitting your manuscript to publishers, or to agents who then submit it to publishers, who then decide whether or not they feel your work has enough artistic merit and market appeal to invest in taking it to print.

Self-publishing, on the other hand, puts the author in control of the publication process: from cover design to marketing and distribution. There’s no intermediary between writer and book, so it sells (or doesn’t sell) entirely on the author’s own efforts.

Both approaches have their pros and cons. Before you decide which one is right for you, it’s worth familiarising yourself with what they both entail.

There are some perfectly good books that are never going to attract a traditional publisher, not because they’re badly written or nobody’s likely to read them, but because they sit outside of market norms.

Self-publishing: the positives and negatives

Once upon a time, self-publishing was seen as a vanity project, but the internet has put an end to that. These days, it’s a perfectly respectable way to bring your book to market, and many self-published authors are taking full advantage of the ability to connect directly with their readership.
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Since the advent of popular e-book platforms like Kindle, self-published novels have carved out a huge chunk of the market. In the last five years alone, the number of self-published books has increased by a whopping 264%. That works out to an average of 300 million self-published books per year.

Self-publishing pros:

• It’s considerably quicker than traditional publishing. If you’ve written a book and want to self-publish it, you can possibly have it fully edited, designed and ready to go in around 9 to 24 weeks
• You’ll retain a much larger percentage of the sale price of every copy you sell – up to 70% of the list price
• You have full creative control over the entire project
• There are some perfectly good books that are never going to attract a traditional publisher, not because they’re badly written or nobody’s likely to read them, but because they sit outside of market norms, and don’t necessarily present an attractive prospect to a publishing company

Self-publishing cons:

• You’re responsible for all expenses incurred in bringing your book to market. And these aren’t small: you’re looking at a minimum of £500-£1,200, and that’s if you DIY a lot of the process yourself (which is not usually advisable). Professional developmental editing and proofreading could easily set you back around £1,500, plus you absolutely cannot cut costs on your cover design if you want the book to sell – that’s going to come in at around £250-£400. You’ll also need an ISBN, but the good news is that’s only around £80. It all adds up.
• The competition is fierce. The market is flooded – 90% of self-published books sell fewer than 100 copies, and 20% of self-published authors reported making no income at all from their books. 

Traditional publishing: the positives and negatives

[Full disclosure: I’m a traditionally published author. I have never self-published a novel, nor do I – at time of writing – have any plans to do so. That’s a choice I made, because it was the right choice for me. It may or may not be the right choice for you. I mention it only in the interests of being completely transparent.]

Traditional publishing, as the name suggests, is the dominant historical model. It involves you, the person with the literary talent but no global marketing network, licensing publishing company to reproduce your words in book form and sell that book on your behalf.

The key word here is licensing. The publisher does not own your work – you do. If you didn’t provide them with a license to print your work, they’d be in breach of copyright law. Any “publisher” that agrees to print your book in exchange for you relinquishing your copyright (i.e. your ownership of the work) is not a publisher, it’s a predator. The general rule of thumb is that if the publisher has contacted you unsolicited, it’s almost certainly a scam. Sorry.

​The specifics of the publishing company’s rights to reproduce your copyrighted material are governed by contract you and the company sign when they agree to publish your work. A publishing contract will, amongst other things, lay out the terms and conditions under which you grant that license, the countries in which it applies, and the remuneration they’ll pay to you in return for your permission to reproduce and sell your writing. These things tend to be utterly impenetrable to the uninitiated, so it’s worth getting professional advice to make sure you’re clear on what you’re agreeing to. If you’re in the UK, the Society of Authors offers help to new writers in possession of a contract; otherwise, you might want to get in touch with a lawyer who specializes in copyright law.

Any “publisher” that agrees to print your book in exchange for you relinquishing your copyright (i.e. your ownership of the work) is not a publisher, it’s a predator.

Trad publishing pros:

• Your book will be in the hands of professional editors, cover designers and marketing experts whose job it is to make sure it sells as many copies as humanly possible
• Publishing companies have access to established publishing networks which can give your book a wider – even global – reach
• You don’t have to put up any money up front. (Any “publishing company” that expects you to invest your own money in the process is a scam.)
• You’ll likely be paid an advance up front on publication without having to wait for money to start coming in from sales

Trad publishing cons:

• It takes forever. When you factor in the time it takes to query an agent (if you’re going down that route), wait for responses, get rejected, send it out again and again and again, get accepted as a client, have your agent send your novel out to publishers (or submit your manuscript to publishers yourself if you decide against seeking an agent), wait for responses, get rejected, send it out again and again and again, and finally get accepted for publication, you could very easily be counting multiple years from the completion of your book. And that’s only the beginning of the process. From signing a contract to actually seeing your book in print will likely take another 12-18 months. “Forever” might even be underselling how long it takes.
• The money is usually not as much as you’d think. Yes, Harry Potter and 50 Shades and Twilight all made massive mountains of cash for their authors, but comparing those success stories to your everyday jobbing author is like going into acting and expecting to be paid like a movie star. In 2017, 54% of full-time authors earned less than $12,488 per year from their writing.
• Advances are shrinking, and they’re an advance on your royalties, not a signing bonus. What that means in practice is that if your advance is £15,000 and your publishing contract says you get 15% of the profit on any sales (5%-15% is typical), then your book needs to be in profit by over £100,000 before you’re eligible to receive any royalty payments. 
• The odds of being accepted for publication aren't great – generally around 1% to 2% of novels get picked up on submission

• An agent is your advocate, with the skills and industry knowledge to make sure you come out of negotiations with as much as possible weighted in your favour

Do you need an agent?

I’m biased here, because I’ve had the enormous good fortune in my writing career to be represented by two fantastic agents, whose support and advice has been invaluable. My default response is always going to be yes, you should look at getting yourself an agent if you want to be traditionally published.

However, in the interests of complete honesty, the answer is no, you don’t need an agent necessarily. You can land a publishing contract without an agent. Many independent presses will consider unsolicited submissions.

​Seeking representation from a literary agency is not going to be the right path for every author, and it’s one that you should consider carefully as you start looking towards publication.

Literary agent pros:

• You can’t get your novel in front of the big publishers without an agent. The major publishing houses will only read work submitted through an agent, so if you want access to that global publishing network, you need an agent
• An agent is your advocate. A publishing contract is a business transaction, with one party (the publisher) generally more experienced than the other (the writer). A literary agent has the skills and industry knowledge to make sure you come out of negotiations with as much as possible weighted in your favour
• Agents don’t get paid until you do, and they get paid on commission, so they’re always going to seek to negotiate the very best deal they can get for their clients
• If anything goes wrong – and it happens – an agent will go to bat for their client. I’ve been in a couple of sticky situations that could have turned out very differently if it weren’t for my agent’s guidance and intervention
• Do you know which territorial rights you should be granting in your publishing contract? Or the appropriate share for each? What about translation rights? Me neither. But an agent does
• It’s a career partnership, and writing is a lonely job sometimes. Having that support behind you is worth a lot

Literary agent cons:

• Querying agents is another (often lengthy) step in what can be a very long process (see point 1 under Trad Publishing Cons)
• Getting an agent ups your chances of landing your dream publishing contract, but it’s not a guarantee
• A portion of any money you earn will go to your agent – this is usually around 15% of any payments arising from contracts your agent has negotiated, but it’ll be higher (around 20%) on any overseas sales they make for you

So... what next?

The thing to remember is that this is a marathon, not a sprint. Getting your novel published is a challenging process, no two ways about it, but it is absolutely worth the journey. Knowing what to expect from that journey is half the battle.

If you’ve decided that the self-publishing route is the right one for you, you’ll need to invest some time and energy into making sure you’re as well informed as possible about the process. There are some great resources online (though beware of apparently helpful websites that exist solely to persuade you to pay them to “self-publish” your book – and predatory presses often try to frame themselves as “self-publishing” service providers, so due diligence is a must).

If traditional publishing is the way you want to go, your next step is to work out which agents or publishers are most likely to fall in love with your MS. In the next blog, I’ll look at how to find them and what to consider when you’re drawing up your list of targets for submission.