Rejection by a publisher usually leaves us feeling down and may set us into a spiral of self doubt or anger that can be painful and self-defeating. It's helpful to know how to handle rejection by a publisher or agent in a more positive way. Everyone faces rejection or failure sometimes. It could be a girl saying’ no’ when you  ask her out,  failing an exam, not passing an audition, not getting into the team, burning a cake or loosing a game. Whatever it is, the feeling is the same, more intense for some things, but basically the same, and not a pleasant feeling. Artists of all kinds get rejected more than most. It’s a fact of life for people in their professions. As a performer, every time I went for an audition, I faced rejection, and rejection is what I got more often than not. This is normal. You get used to it, but it can take a while.  By the time I started writing, I was prepared for the inevitable rejections. I’d learnt how to handle it. Tips on avoiding … [Read more...]

If you’ve written your book, want it published and don’t want to do the publishing work yourself, then you’ll be contacting agents and/or publishers. Self-publishing service providers aren’t selective, so if you’re happy to self-publish with someone else doing the work, then you just contact a self-publishing company and go from there; you don’t have to present your book well in order to get them to want to read it. But hybrid publishers, like my company AIA Publishing, are selective. Although the publishing process is author funded, hybrid publishers don’t publish just anything, and so you’ll have to submit a query and see if they think your book is good enough for them to publish, just as you do with an agent or mainstream/legacy publisher. I started in the literary business as an author, and I researched how to write a good query letter and best practices to maximise my chances of snagging a publisher. Some of the advice I found—though I followed it all—made me wonder why such … [Read more...]

Some think that writing style issues are irrelevant because an author’s style is a personal choice. Indeed it is a personal choice, though that choice is mostly unconscious. We each express ourselves in a way that sounds right to us, that is in our voice—unless we’re doing a copy-cat of someone else or aiming to write in a particular style for a particular purpose, for instance, a Gothic style or a report. Our style may be similar to another author, of course, but our word choice, what we choose to reveal and focus on, and how we phrase our thoughts will be ours alone. For that reason, as an editor, I try not to do anything that changes an author’s overall style; I aim to strengthen, not weaken their voice. However, stylistic choices that are ‘bad form’ do have to be eradicated if the author wants a truly professional product. Certain stylistic choices are ‘bad form’ for a reason; not just because someone says so, but because they water down the author’s message—they weaken the … [Read more...]