WHAT PUBLISHING REALLY WANTS

And why it's actually a good thing.

My late father’s typewriter, bought new in 1952. Still works almost flawlessly.

Hello friends. I want to address what I consider to be some incorrectness circulating online about what it takes to get a novel traditionally published. I am not talking memoir or nonfiction here. Just novel-length fiction. And not self- or hybrid- or even small press publishing. Trad pub only. Okay? Now that we’re clear—

Publishing is a fickle, opaque, and sometimes cruel business, but over my years navigating it, writing manuscripts, getting rejected, shelving manuscripts, rewriting, signing with an agent and a Big 5 publisher, writing some more manuscripts, getting rejected again, writing some more… okay you get the idea… Over all that time, if I have learned one important thing about the business that has not changed, and about which I regularly see well-meaning but wrong information, it is this:

If you want to get a novel traditionally published, the thing that will give you the best chance of making it …