The Journey to Writing a Successful Story: a tip book

How Do I Become Published?

This question comes up every now and then, probably even more in the Industry club. But many people, especially teens, want to know how they can become published, and how do they get rich off of it. Others may want to know how old do you have to be and maybe what's the average age of those who get published. Some may even want to know how the industry works (the process for when they look at your work). There's also people who have asked about how people got published from Wattpad.

Although becoming published would be amazing, it shouldn't be something that you tell to many people. Because a lot of people don't know the industry - they think that if you get published, you instantly become wealthy.

It doesn't work like that.

You must be giving me the confused expression with probably a hint of the sad, puppy face. "Then how does it all work?"

From research, this is how the process works - there may be a few more things that I don't know (which if you do know, you may correct me in the comments below), but this is just from what I know.

First of all, publishers look for specific projects. Mostly to deal with genre and plot line. From what I know, publishers are looking for books that will sell, that goes with what's popular already. That is why you see a lot of dystopian works that are getting popular. Because dystopian will sell.

But they aren't just looking for a good idea that will sell. They're looking for work that is professional looking (being edited dozens of times) and that fits with the amount of words they are looking for.

Publishers are looking for books that aren't very long (around the 50,000-80,000 range). If it's too long, they'll just throw it out then and there without reading it. They look for length first, from what I've heard. But this is because they don't want to put a large book on the shelf; it takes up too much space. They may allow it on two conditions: A) the author is famous and they know it'll sell. And or B) the book is that good.

The process to me is a little fuzzy, because you do have to go through editing with a professional, getting a professional cover (meaning you have to pay for an artist/photographer and model), then printing it. There's much more to the process, but again, I haven't gotten that far yet. But I do know that the process takes a good year or so.

There are people who have asked about agents. Basically you call agents to ask if they can become your agent and they respond back after they've read your story. If they like it, they will give you an answer. Agents are free to get, but they get a percentage from the book that'll get published. That's how they make their money.

Getting recognized after your story gets published will become hard. You have to pay for advertisement and all. From an article I just read, it said that we actually spend about or over 8,000 dollars on the book (getting it published and such). It's actually a lot harder than having your story free on here.

But because you're spending so much on it, you're not even getting a profit which is why many writers struggling making writing a full on career. That's probably why your parents may tell you that it's not realistic.

Most authors don't even get rich off of writing. Very few do. Most writers end up having some type of job to keep up with their bills.

J.K Rowling was a researcher and bilingual secretary when the idea of Harry Potter was conceived. After nine months of her mother's death, she was living in Portugal at the time, teaching people how to speak English. When she moved to Scotland, she was living with her daughter, fighting a severe depression, while also being very poor. But she pulled through it and found herself an agent (her first agent that she tried to hire sent the manuscript right back to her, very fast). It took nearly a year to find a publisher. But her networth? 1 billion.