Publishing Resources List

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Totally overwhelmed? Start here!






Make sure you :+fav: the news article!

So you've written something freaking awesome. You've edited a million times (and if you haven't, turn around and go do that. Right now). You think you maybe want to take the leap and try publishing something. But you have no idea where to start.

Well, this is a good place to be.

This the journal where I'll be keeping a running list of all the publishing resources I find, both on and off dA. Most of it will probably be related to literary journals, since that's the stage where I'm at in my literary career, but I'll add things about book publishing as I find them.

If you ever find a great resource, or if you'd like to request something specific, please leave me a note in the comments.

Also this journal is probably going to be super-messy and slightly badly-categorized for the first few weeks, so if anything looks out of place and/or you can think of a better way for me to organize this, please do yell at me.



Getting Your Work Ready for Publication
:bulletblue: SadisticIceCream's An Idiot's Guide to Lit Mag Publishing and An Idiot's Guide to Book Publishing My very own guides on the submission process, meant to be companion pieces to this journal.

:bulletblue: Research, Track and Conquer: How to Research Short Fiction Markets, Track Submissions, and Ultimately Get Published

:bulletblue: Choosing Your Path: Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing by Magic-fan

:bulletblue: Five Key Book Publishing Paths From traditional to completely self-published, this infographic lays out your publishing options.

:bulletblue: Five Things the Submitting Writer Should Know

:bulletblue: What should a manuscript look like?

:bulletblue: How to format a short story manuscript

:bulletblue: How to format a poem manuscript


How to Avoid Getting Scammed
:bulletblue: If you want to publish professionally...

:bulletblue: A Note on Publishing Scams

:bulletblue: Publishing Scams More tips on avoiding scams from DorianHarper.

:bulletblue: Preditors & Editors A list of legit and not-so-legit editors and publishers.

:bulletblue: Thumbs Down Agency List What to watch out for when looking for an agent -- any of the items on this list might tip you off to a scam.


How to Submit to Literary Journals
:bulletblue: Small Press Magazines: Should You Bother? Short answer: Yes.

:bulletblue: What Editors Want A pretty much A to Z guide on the submission process, and what editors expect every step of the way. Speaking as an editor who formerly handled submissions, all of this advice is absolutely spot-on.

:bulletred: Find literary journals:
:bulletblue: Duotrope If you ask me, this is the golden standard for a searchable lit journal database. If you sign up, you can even keep track of your submissions using their system. Duotrope will be a subscription-based service beginning in January 2013.

:bulletblue: NewPages Another excellent database of publications.

:bulletblue: Poets & Writers magazine's database of literary journals The magazine is also full of great advice for writers.

:bulletblue: Every Writers Resource's Database of Lit Mags Thanks for the tip, neurotype-on-discord!

:bulletblue: The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses's lit mag directory

:bulletblue: Creative Writers Opportunities List A Yahoo Group that lists not only places where you can submit, but jobs and general publishing news as well.

:bulletred: Sending your submissions out:
:bulletblue: Cover Letter Advice

:bulletblue: Submitting to Lit Journals (by email)


How to Find an Agent
:bulletblue: When is your book ready for an agent? Advice from just one agent, but it's very good, universal advice at that.

:bulletblue: So You Wanna Publish a Book? Lots of information about how to find, approach, and submit queries and proposals to literary agents.

:bulletblue: How to Get a Literary Agent

:bulletblue: Five Ways to Find an Agent for Your Book

:bulletblue: List of Agents

:bulletblue: AgentQuery A free, searchable database with tons of literary agents.

:bulletblue: Association of Authors' Representatives A database of literary agents who are members of this reputable organization. They also have a great list of FAQs for writers. (Discovered in an interview with Jon-Law.)

:new::bulletblue: Manuscript Wish List Agents and editors list what types of literature they're seeking so you can best match your work to their interests!

:bulletblue: Literary Rejections's Agency Database Hat tip to reddaverocker.

:bulletblue: 23 Samples of Successful Query Letters for Literary Agents Lots of different genres on this list, so check it out!

:bulletblue: Agent Query Letters that Worked for Nonfiction

:bulletblue: Top Reasons for Manuscript Rejection

:bulletblue: What to Ask an Agent Things you should ask an agent after they've offered you representation.


How to Submit to Publishers
:bulletblue: Traditional Publishing Isn't The Man neurotype-on-discord sets you straight.

:bulletblue: On Writing – Getting Published A short list of things you should have accomplished before getting to this step.

:bulletblue: Getting Published: Step One Lots of helpful advice from LateNightLady.

:bulletblue: What is the Process of Getting Published? A short overview, from writing to marketing.

:bulletblue: How Does a Book Get Published? Another short overview of the process.

:bulletblue: Getting Published the Hard Way

:bulletblue: The Best and Worst Times to Submit to Publishers While you should always follow the guidelines that editors have on their websites about when their reading periods might be, this short article also has some pretty interesting data on what might be good weeks to submit your manuscript.

:bulletblue: Pitch Perfect Some helpful pointers on how to submit a pitch to a publisher.

:bulletblue: Writing a Query

:bulletblue: Query Shark Get your query critiqued, or just read other people's critiqued queries to figure out what works and what doesn't.

:bulletblue: QueryTracker Keep track of all those queries you're sending!

:bulletblue: Writing a Synopsis

:bulletblue: How to Write a One-Page Synopsis Thanks, Snapperz!

:bulletblue: Sample Synopses

:bulletblue: More Sample Synopses Warning: these are for romance novels!

:bulletblue: Writing a Book Proposal

:bulletblue: How to Write a Book Proposal

:bulletblue: Publishers' Catalogues A database with loads of different book publishers, large and small.


How to Self-Publish
:bulletblue: Seven Signs That You're Not Ready to Self-Publish Thanks, raspil!

:bulletblue: Self-Published Author A website created by Bowker, the company that generates all book ISBNs worldwide, Self-Published Author has lots of articles and resources.

:bulletblue: The Self-Publishing Review A magazine dedicated to self-publishing news and reviews.

:bulletblue: So You Want to Self-Publish merrak has begun an ongoing article series to outline all your self-publishing options. Check out this master article list to orient yourself, click on the completed articles listed, or see when something that interests you is coming up.

:bulletblue: Tips on Self-Publishing

:bulletblue: CJ Lyons's Indie Publishing Resources Includes guides on self-publishing as a whole, cover art, and e-book publishing, as well as additional helpful resources.

:bulletblue: How to Budget for your Self-Published Book Tips from Guy Kawasaki.

:bulletblue: Free E-book Formatting and Marketing Guides All the major e-book self-publishing outlets' guides, in one centralized place.

:bulletblue: Why Your Self-Published Book Might Suck a Bag of Dicks -- and if you're done crying over that, here's Part Two.

:bulletblue: Who controls your Amazon e-book price?

:bulletblue: How to Sell Ebooks at the Apple iBookstore

:bulletblue: How to Use Kickstarter to Fund Your Publishing Project Kickstarter is one of the largest crowd-sourced fundraising platforms currently in existence, and this article contains tips on how to best utilize it.

:bulletblue: Directory of Freelance Editors and Writers It's a work in progress, but here, you can download a searchable list to find someone to fill your proofreading, copyediting, or developmental editing needs.

:bulletblue: Book Editing from Kirkus Editorial Have you thought about self-publishing your book, but need help with general editing, copyediting, or proofreading? Kirkus Editorial, part of the company that publishes the very prestigious Kirkus Review, is offering editing services for indie and self-published authors who want their work to have a little extra polish. Keep in mind that these are first-rate editors who have somewhat hefty rates (although you do get what you pay for!), and that using their services does not guarantee an awesome review from their parent company.

:bulletblue: PressBooks This free service will convert your Word files into e-reader friendly formats, including EPUB, MOBI (Kindle), and PDF. Might be helpful if you're looking to self-publish on dA through the new Premium Content program -- just convert your files, zip them, upload them here, and go.

:bulletblue: Formatting an E-book in 10 Easy Steps, Part 1 and Part 2

:bulletblue: Five Free E-book Templates Note: You need PowerPoint or Adobe InDesign to edit these.

:bulletblue: Liberio Convert your Google files into .epub files for free.

:bulletblue: How to Self-Publish Your Audiobook Through Audible

:bulletblue: How to Put Your Audiobook on Spotify


How to Publicize Your Book
:bulletblue: Should I Hire a Book Publicist?

:bulletblue: Promote yourself!

:bulletblue: Publicize yourself! This article is geared toward visual artists, but there's a lot that writers can mine from it, too.

:bulletblue: Book Marketing Strategies This might just look like a simple FAQ page for Simon & Schuster's new self-publishing arm, but it really does have some great tips for marketing your book.

:bulletblue: Jared Dees's Book Launch Ideas 33 ideas to help you publicize your book.

:bulletblue: A Brief Note on Social Media for Writers

:bulletblue: What You Can Do to Promote Your Book Online (Start on page 6.)

:bulletblue: authorRise A free social media analytics tool for authors.

:bulletblue: A list of free sites where you can promote your ebook

:bulletblue: Place to find reviewers for self-published books

:bulletblue: Solicit Amazon's top reviewers Sounds shady, but apparently it works -- find some of Amazon's top reviewers and see if they'll throw up a book review for you on the site. These are people who are trusted by the community to provide good, honest reviews, so it might lend your work some credibility among Amazon customers.

:bulletblue: How to Pitch Your Book to Online Outlets Especially if you write a nonfiction book, pitching some of your book's ideas as guest blog posts or articles online can be a great way to gain more publicity.

:bulletblue: Authors Who Visit Book Clubs Are you interested in talking to book clubs about your book, either in person or via Skype? Add yourself to this list and get some publicity while connecting to your readers!

:bulletblue:Authorgraph If you ever think your readers might be sad because they have your books in digital editions and can't get them signed, consider signing up for this service -- it allows you to create a personalized, digital signature and inscription whenever a reader requests one through the site.

:bulletblue: How Authors Can Use Goodreads A collection of helpful blog posts from author Michael J. Sullivan.

:bulletblue: How Publishers and Authors Can Use SoundCloud Record yourself (or someone else) reading an except of your book and gain extra publicity!

:bulletblue: Use Odyl Odyl is a Facebook tool that you can use to publicize your book on any author fan pages you might have. The company has a partnership with major publishers, but self-published authors can get in on the action, too.

:bulletblue: Top 4 Tips on How to Run a Pinterest Promotion Some ideas to consider for events like book giveaways.

:bulletblue: NoiseTrade Give away a free excerpt of your ebook (or the book in its entirety) in exchange for readers' emails and zip codes in order to build your audience for future releases. People who download your book can also leave you tips of any amount, of which you'll be able to keep 80%.


How to Handle Rejection
:bulletblue: Write Now: Rejection Found by BeccaJS.

:bulletblue: Survival Guide for the Thin-Skinned Writer



Literary Journals and Publishers On and Off deviantART Click on the icons for the deviantART pages of these publications!

:bulletblue: BeccaJS's Publishing Opportunities Journal

:bulletblue: :iconthemissingslate: The Missing Slate

:bulletblue: Fuselit

:bulletblue: Side B Magazine

:bulletblue: :icondivertirpublishing: Divertir Publishing

:bulletblue: Asymptote Only accepts translations.

:bulletblue: Alliterati Magazine Thanks for the tip, LiliWrites!

:bulletblue: Quantum Fairy Tales Looking for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction with speculative elements. Thanks for the tip, aldessa!

:bulletblue: Kindle Scout Upload your manuscript, and if it gets enough nominations, Kindle Publishing might accept it for publication. Advances are $1500 and royalties are 50%.

:bulletblue: Loveswept, Alibi, Hydra, and Flirt Random House has a few new digital-only imprints for genre fiction that are accepting unsolicited submissions. Categories include romance, horror, sci-fi, mystery, and new adult (that is, work geared toward 20- and 30-somethings). Click through for submission details!

:bulletblue: Nine Literary Magazines Seeking Work from New and Unpublished Writers Thanks for the tip, SkysongMA!

Blogs
Blogs marked with :bulletgreen: can also be found on julietcaesar's awesome and extensive List of Useful Writing Blogs!

:bulletgreen: The Creative Penn One author's experience with self-publishing.

:bulletgreen: A. Victoria Mixon, Editor I love blogs like this. You get to see how editors tick. Also check out the news article on this!

:bulletgreen: Adventures in Children's Publishing Don't be fooled by the title -- there's also great advice for writers of other genres.

:bulletgreen: Miss Snark, the literary agent No longer publishing new posts, but still full of useful things.

:bulletblue: The Writing Workshop: Get Published! An amalgamation of publishing-related posts from the founder of Pritchett, Farlow, & Smith Publishing.

:bulletblue: Chuck Sambuchino's Guide to Literary Agents One editor's guide to -- you guessed it -- literary agents and what they look for in your work.

:bulletblue: CJ Lyons's No Rules Just Write Filled with general writing advice and tons of tips on self-publishing.

:bulletblue: Nathan Bransford answers your publishing FAQs! Some answers from a real-life author. Plus some bonus writing tips. ;)

:bulletblue: Dean Wesley Smith's "Think Like a Publisher Series" Great tips on self-publishing, lifted from the LITplease transcript of a chat with Amriah, here.

:bulletblue: Writer Beware Blog! Featuring information about scams, industry news, and random publishing information tidbits.

:bulletblue: The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment One writer explains his publishing pitfalls so you don't make the same mistakes.
 Thanks for the tip, Aelorn!


Traditional and Self-Publishing Ventures and Venues

:bulletblue: Authonomy Run by HarperCollins, one of many major book publishing houses, Authonomy allows you to upload parts of your novel. If it goes viral, HarperCollins might pick it up for publication.

:bulletblue: Book Country A community for genre writers, Book Country now offers e-book self-publishing packages, as well as a completely free option. Royalty rates differ by package.

:bulletblue: Pubslush Crowdfunding for books. People who start a crowdfunding campaign get to keep whatever funds they make regardless of whether you reach your funding goal (although I can't find anywhere what cut Pubslush takes).

:bulletblue: reKiosk A new self-publishing venture that allows you to post your work and earn 95% of the profit at your own digital storefront. Even better, other users who like your ebook can also sell it from their shops, giving you and them a 70% and 25% cut, respectively. Check out their FAQ for more information.

:bulletblue: Pronoun A self-publishing venture where you get to keep 100% of your profits.

:bulletblue: Readership Authors can upload excerpts of their books to the site and get feedback and support from readers. If enough readers vote that your book should be published (and pledge donations), Readership will create a complete ebook for you, including a cover, formatting, and publicity. You get 70% of the royalties.

:bulletblue: Chirpify Sell your content through Twitter statuses; users need only reply with "buy" to purchase. Chirpify gets 5% of every sale, and you keep the rest.

:bulletblue: FastPencil This service offers some pretty typical self-publishing packages, but what really intrigues me is that they're teaming up with libraries to encourage patrons to self-publish, and their home libraries to carry their books. They might be coming to a local branch near you.

:bulletblue: Assignmint This isn't really a publishing site, but for those of you who are interested in journalism, this website lets you keep your articles, pitches, and related contacts all in one place. You can also pitch through the website's interface.

:bulletblue: Leafless This site allows you to first offer your ebook to readers for free through their website, and as it gains readers, reviewers, and social media shares, the price of the book will increase in $1 increments. You get to keep 75% of the profits.



Miscellaneous

:bulletblue: Story Tracker iPhone App Have an iPhone? Need to keep track of your submissions, the markets you want to submit to, and your responses? There's an app for that! Thanks to zebrazebrazebra for the tip.

:bulletblue: WordRates In their words: "a crowdsourced database for journalists to share information about the publishing industry, rate editors and magazines, and identify the best possible market for their work."

:bulletblue: Resource Central

:bulletblue: Resources on the Side!

:bulletblue: Publishers & Editors Answer Questions! A super-informative interview.

:bulletblue: Memnalar's Deviants in Print series:
Maija Haavisto, diamondie
E. Kristin Anderson, PinkyMcCoversong
D. L. Meyer, denlm
Todd Keisling, alienhead

:bulletblue: Union and Guild Resources for Writers Even if you're a freelance or self-published writer, look here for writers' union groups that can help you navigate and negotiate your rights.

:bulletblue: How Publishing Works Your questions answered by published deviant PinkyMcCoversong. See also her new thread on the same topic, now with more answers from vglory, zebrazebrazebra, fyoot, and neurotype-on-discord.

:bulletblue: Ask Me Anything About Publishing Poetry in the Real World PinkyMcCoversong answers your questions!

:bulletblue: PinkyMcCoversong's Writing Resources for Noobs (...and not-so-noobs)

:bulletblue: 6 Lessons (and Tips) I Learned from Self-Publishing Published deviant Amriah drops some knowledge on her blog.
© 2011 - 2024 SadisticIceCream
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Rosary0fSighs's avatar
You are always an incredible help :tighthug: :huggle: thank you so much for this :heart: