From Promising to Published

A Multi-Genre, Insider's Guide to the Publication Process

Melanie Faith

• Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781925965933
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Publishing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

You've been writing and honing your craft for months or years and are curious about seeking publication for your latest project. Perhaps you wonder about the next steps in the process. Look no further!

This book has a little something for every writer interested in expanding their audience and sharing their writing with readers, from pre-writing and writing your drafts to choosing your market and the writing life before, during, and after publication.

Topics covered include:

The Lovely Littles: Breaking into Literary Magazines

The Spinning Spider: Keeping Track of your Brainchildren

Options, You've Got 'em: Traditional, Indie/Small, University Press, or Self-Publishing

Two Streams with One Stone: To Simultaneously Submit or Not

Monetize it! Part One: All about the Benjamins; Monetize it! Part Two: Risk and a Swimming Metaphor

The Myth of the Fancy-Pants Tools

The Art of Writing the Author Bio

Paradox Meets Passion: Writer vs. Author

The Slam-Bam Reply: Now in Two Painful Varieties; Creative Noodling

F.U.N

and so much more!

Section Two:
Finding Your Market

Repeat After Me: Target Audience

I had a dream last night that I stole a car. Not just any car: a 1970s muscle car.

I was the getaway driver. I could see myself behind the wheel as if I were riding in the passenger seat looking over at myself. As a getaway driver, I was Steve McQueen-calm as a cucumber, revving the engine, ready to ride.

In true dream logic, I could see myself gunning it and also see the landscape from inside my body, focusing out the windshield ahead of me, legs stretched out, seat back, nothing but time to lap up the freedom. Ribbons and ribbons and ribbons of highway.

I was not afraid that I’d never driven a clutch. I was not afraid that I’d be caught. I moved through gears as if they were butter. The car had a hum and a torque that thrummed inside and outside of the ride.

I didn’t even give it a thought that I’d hot-wired the machine, other than the soupçon of joy, that little shivery thrill in the gut, that the chromey, purry beast was mine: #lockyourgarages. Although it was not my name on the registration card in the glove box, it made no difference. Mine for this moment, and in the way of dreams, the immediate was all there was.

I talked to a passenger from time to time or they talked to me, a good companion, but I don’t remember a thing about what they looked like or what their name was. Other times, I was alone and enjoying it—the dusty scent of the seats, the 8-track player—all to myself.

Yes, I was pretty bodacious—well, in the dream anyway. I was fully competent, content in every way. I did not think about the car accident I had as a young woman that took away my carefree feeling with driving or that I had no map or GPS in the car. I certainly didn’t think ahead, nor did I think behind. I was gloriously present, hand-cranking the windows down but mostly riding with them up, steeping in the sun and in the scent of my own honeysuckle-gardenia perfume.

I was still driving contentedly and with a splendid sense of forward propulsion—to where? from where? I gave it no thought in my dream world, didn’t care what the destination was, just ever-onward—when I awoke.

If I was pitching my dream as a book to a publisher (granted, I’d have to flesh it out way more before that), I’d begin to think of key questions like:

• Who is my ideal reader?
• What age range might they be?
• What are their interests?
• What is their educational level?
• What groups or organizations do they belong to?
• Why would this person want to read this story/concept?

Whether you’ve written a stand-alone piece, such as a poem or short story or flash fiction or essay, or a longer collection or novel, these questions will put you in a good frame of mind to match your work with interested markets. Publishers and editors always want to have a clear and immediate idea of who will gravitate toward your narrative. Whatever genre you write and whatever length the piece, it’s a great idea to consider your target audience before submitting your work as well as perusing the books and website(s) of the publication or publisher you have in mind. Your work should also mesh in tone and style with the work they’ve already published.

For my dream, I’d want a publication or publisher whose readers were interested in cars, especially muscle cars or retro items. They might have owned a muscle car in the ’70s or later. They might have had parents or former loves who did or borrowed one for their wedding reception or taken photos of them or gone to car shows or secretly always wanted one. They are likely Gen-X or baby boomers, although they could also be millennials who have an interest in antiques or classic cars. They find dreams and dream interpretation/symbolism interesting. They likely have a college education. They are probably interested in travel and road trips and have taken quite a few. Personal growth, such as dramatic career changes, might be part of their current life’s journey.

While these wouldn’t be the only readers drawn to my description, just thinking about a possible target audience will make it clear if there are some details to edit from the piece and/or to add to the piece to attract these demographics who are most likely to enjoy the work. Far better than just flinging your work, unresearched, to editors or publishers without preparation and without considering who will gravitate toward your work. It also makes a Yes, we’d love to publish this much more likely.

It might also be helpful to think of readers you’re not interested in appealing to as you plan where you’ll pitch your work. For example, it’s unlikely anyone under sixteen or eighteen or twenty-one (depending on the driving age in each country) would find my anecdote appealing. Readers who hate traveling or who find dreams hokey and no more symbolic than any other experience in life also wouldn’t click with my piece.

As such, I wouldn’t send it to a children’s magazine nor pitch it to a YA publisher or a scientific publisher.

Also, I might have been perusing a few of my favorite photographers’ websites an hour before bed, one of whom is a film photographer out West who frequently posts vintage muscle cars from his travels.

Dreaming, as we know, is a wacky hodgepodge like that. Whatever the reasoning for such imagery, we can apply the knowledge that there is an audience out there fine-tuned and raring to read the genre and style we’re writing. Use the above questions to help narrow down and find just that readership.

Try this exercise:

Consider your work in progress. Set a timer for fifteen minutes and begin to free-write about your target audience for your current project. Use any or all of the six questions as guidelines/prompts, but feel free to explore any other aspects of your ideal readers you’d like to list. Go!

The Lovely Littles:
Breaking into Literary Magazines

I like to think of myself as a much bigger presence (don’t we all?), but actually I round up to 5’2” (157.5 cm). My “little” sister was taller than I was by the time she was eight. When I drive, the seat is set as far forward as possible, almost crushing me into the wheel, and I still barely peep over the dash.

Life at this angle is, well, a lot of looking up. Yep, at home I keep a blue plastic stepstool handy that was a cast-off beside the overflowing dumpster on undergraduate move-out day, and I’m certainly not above seeking out taller people to reach just about any shelf in a store because on pretty much every trip there are multiple items on “eye-level” shelves that even tiptoes won’t accomplish. Except for small children, there’s a pretty good chance that my eye-level isn’t eye-level for ninety percent of the population. One bonus, though: cheaper products tend to be on lower shelves, so I save some cash. Still, it can get frustrating when half of a shopping list is items towering out of reach.

Sometimes, there’s nobody in sight to come to my aid, so I’ve made some pretty wacky attempts at reaching desired items, including a leap-up-and-grab technique that most certainly doesn’t resemble a graceful gazelle (but does frequently tip over the wrong item on my return to ground). In a move I think of as The Light Saber, I find stick-like boxes, such as uncooked spaghetti, to poke at taller shelves in an attempt to dislodge and rain down overhead items into my arms (often barely missing my head and shoulders). You may correctly assess that these retrieval methods have varying degrees of success. (Why yes, I am very entertaining—or very embarrassing, depending on your POV—to accompany to a grocery store.)

Still, there are plenty of great things about small containers too. Many of my favorites also come in small packages: from various brightly colored candies to freshly popped popcorn to pockets and kittens and buttons and pens. And literary magazines.

Small-circulation literary magazines are a treasure trove for writers looking into publication. Some are associated with a particular school or university while others are run by an independent editor and/or their staff who are likely also writers themselves.

There are small literary magazines that wish to publish any genre you can think of as well as hybrid genres, such as prose poems and autofiction. Many literary magazines accept multiple types of writing, especially in the genres of fiction/short stories and flash fiction, nonfiction/essays, and poetry. Most literary journals are staffed by passionate lovers of literature and art who want to find meaningful work that they can publish and champion.

Small literary magazines may offer some remuneration, such as a cash payment (a literary magazine that took one of my poems recently paid me $5; an article I once sold to a print literary magazine for writers paid me $200).

A free contributor’s copy of the print issue or a free PDF copy are more frequently offered in exchange for publication. So why should writers want to publish in little magazines that are still building their circulation/read...

Table of contents

• Publication: Why Me? Why You?
• Section One: Preparing
• Section Two: Finding Your Market
• Section Three: Dishing about Dividends
• Section Four: This Writing Life
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Other Books by this Author