Anyone here published? Whats a good way to get started?

Write a good book that's not terrible and garbage

>>8480726
because no one ever got rejected before when submitting a great book, right?

Have friends or family in the publishing industry. This usually helps.

Two short stories published. Get duotrope.

Focus on building a publication portfolio. Publish short stories or poems in small publications for a while. Then try to push for a real publication.

If you're an undergrad there are publications specifically for you, often out of medium sized reasonably prestigious state schools(see: something like this http://sucarnocheereview.wixsite.com/sucarnocheereview/submit )

If you're not affiliated with a school it's inherently harder, but just google for places that take open submissions and try to get some short stories published.

It will all go easily from there.

Source: I'm an editor for a small publisher in Tennessee. We do about ten books a year, and one of our major criteria for novels is that our clients simply have a few publications to make sure the general academic public enjoys their work. Past that it's up to their novel to impress us on its own merits.

>>8480966
Name ten times where that happened

>>8480700
Get good at sucking cock and hobnob around literary events until you find the right cock(s) to suck.

>>8481042
I'm the publisher guy above you, knowing publishing history is part of my job. May not come up with 10, but here are some rejected authors off the top of my head

A Wrinkle in Time is one of the popular examples, it was rejected 20+ times before being published and becoming incredibly popular.

Salinger

E.E. Cummings

James Joyce was famously rejected 20+ times, and ended up buying nearly half of the first 300 copies of Dubliners that were sold once it did finally get published.

Richard Bach(admittedly the book is awful but it's famous and has sold something around 40 million copies)

Kenneth Grahame(Wind in the Willows)

Nabokov(Lolita of course)

Diary of Anne Frank took YEARS to get published

William Golding(Lord of the Flies)

Audrey Niffenegger is a very recent example of an ultra-popular vaguely literary book that was rejected many times then went on to sell millions of copies

Kerouac's On the Road was rejected a few times

H.G. Wells(war of the worlds)

Orwell(Animal Farm was rejected a few times and he put it away for a bit before it was published)


These are just off the top of my head...I could perhaps continue digging - oh, I just remembered that Borges had a nearly impossible time finding English translators, and was rejected many times by publishers. That's a big one. I hope you get the point. Many great novels have gone misunderstood or ignored by publishers for YEARS before being published. Recognizing this and giving every novel that comes through submissions a fair shot is part of being a good publisher.

>>8481110
Oh, Moby Dick was rejected and nearly didn't get published too. It was called too old-fashioned. Another thought, Faulkner's breakout novel Sanctuary nearly didn't get published because of rejections. These two were too high-profile not to make a followup post when I remembered them.

>>8481110
>>8481121
You seem to have overlooked my original post.

"Write a good book that's not terrible and garbage"

Please try again!

>>8481130
>Salinger
>Cummings
>Joyce
>Faulkner
>Melville

I can accept the others being called too bad to count, but come on. Look up your 20 favorite books and I bet at least one was rejected.

>>8481130
Oh yes, because Moby Dick and Lolita have famously been criticized as being, "terrible and garbage."

>>8481077
This is terrible advice, don't listen to it. I still haven't been published.

>>8481130
Dankly memed.

>>8481208
You just haven't sucked the right one. That or you didn't suck it well enough.

>>8481110
Proust's first volume of In Search of Lost Time was also famously rejected by publishers. He ended up paying for the publication himself. One of the publishers that rejected him later said that it was the greatest regret of his entire life.

>>8480700
After the publications people are mentioning, get an agent.
It's important in this climate because none of the big 5 publishers (and most of their imprints) are not pulling work from their slushpiles, they're getting their work from agents they trust.
An agent will also help you edit your work further to get it ready for the publishers, and will put together a better pitch to the publisher than you can. Not to mention the advantage of having somebody with contacts in the industry at bat for you.

I think all the advice in here is well-given.

I guess the only question is, how soon after getting some smaller works published should you try for an agent? I've gotten a few short stories published, but I feel like trying to get a few more published before searching out for one.

>>8481946
Publish until your works are published at a rate you're comfortable with. Getting a book published is going to be 10 times harder than getting a short story published alongside others, unless you find a small publisher that is desperate for any decent novel, which you don't want to be tied to.

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64KB, 500x332px

>>8481130

>>8481946
Don't even worry about it until you have a manuscript ready. By ready I don't mean a first draft, but finished completely, edited until you think it is as perfect as you can get it. This could be a novel, or it could be a collection of short stories. If it's a collection of stories, you'll want most of those to already be published. Also, in the case of stories, it helps to have at least a good start on a novel, and a good excerpt. Publishers will be more likely to buy a collection just to get you signed to a two book deal so they can have the rights to the novel as well.

>>8481142
No one has 20 favorite books here when they can only justify 5 of them to all the smartypants /lit/ anons

>>8481130
kek low quality b8 faggot, summer has gone on too long here.

>>8481110
>Niffenegger
LMFAO

>>8481957
Isn't it unwanted for the stories in your collection to already have been published elsewhere?

>>8486006
not necessarily. it's the same for chapters of a book--rr martin published part of song of ice and fire and got a deal to send in the rest of his book based on it. if the short stories you've published are already 10/10 they could be the bait for a publisher to ask for a greater collection of your work