how do i get someone to publish a book?

thanks i guys i know that i didn't start this thread but it will help me out also. See i have been writing since i was in seventh grade and i have one idea i have focused on the most. Right now I am at my tenth version of it becuase everytime i get going i get pretty far in and then i say something that i didn't explain beforehand meaning it makes no sense but the good thing about that is that i can change all my other mistakes. So thanks guys this will help me and always be on the look out for my books

I hate to break it to you, but in the U.S. at least, if you're serious about finding a good publishing house and not a vanity press or a "We own all rights in perpetuity" rip-off, you need an agent. When you see "does not accept unrepresented manuscripts" or something similar, that's what they mean. This is becoming increasingly common, in large part because it saves publishing houses a fortune on first-read editors who weed out the real crap. A reputable agent will do that for them because he or she doesn't want to represent trash. Yes, publishing is brutal; there's lots of competition, and you have to be better than maybe 90% of it to get published. The industry term is "slush-pile," and it's like winning the lottery to get out of it, even if you're very good.

But all that's for later. As Moz said, write first and leave the business stuff for later; you don't want it interfering.

Last but not least, when you're done, get thee a copy editor, preferably before shopping the manuscript even to an agent. Repeat: Not a computer spell-checker, but a copy editor. It's a lot of hard work, so if someone says they'll work for free or ridiculously cheap, remember you're going to get exactly what you pay for.

Why isn't spell-check enough? Try:

1. You say "hippopotamus" when you mean "rhinoceros." As long as you spell both right, spell-checkers don't care.

2. You call a supporting character "Bill" on page 25 and "Will" on page 269. Spell-checkers don't care.

3. You say something happened in 1983, and it actually happened in 1985. Spell-checkers don't care.

4. Grammar-checkers exist, but they currently stink on ice.

Copy editors do care about - and correct - all those things. Readers care about all those things, too; it's kind of what readers do. Ask a published author sometime about what happens if you make a tiny factual error in a published piece of writing. :)

Actualy right now i am in contact with D.J. Mchale asking about how he got his ideas and what i need to do to get my books published. So i mean hopefully by talking to a published author i can actualy get alot acomplished.

You already are talking to one (she said, blushing). So, for anyone who might be interested:

NB: My experience is in publishing poetry, which is different from publishing fiction in some ways (mostly in that it's MUCH harder due to a far smaller and much more locked-up number of available "slots"), but in the basics, the same.

Getting published is incredibly, mind-numbingly hard, always assuming you want a real publisher that isn't ripping you off to stroke your ego (which I am going to assume :) ).

When I was 16, I discovered I really liked to write poetry, and the hard-ass creative writing teacher at my high school said I was good. I kept writing, graduated, and went to college, where I started majoring in journalism (the only way I could come up with to both write and not have to live in a refrigerator box) and finished in linguistics (because journalism was awful). I continued to write poetry, and was published in the university's literary magazine, won a couple of small contests, and saw publication in a couple of smaller journals, as well (This in itself is not easy; one of them averages over 20,000 submissions a year, and figuring 50 poems per issue, 4 issues a year, that means they publish only about 1% of what they receive each year.). Then, as a junior, I heard a recording of Wallace Stevens reading his "The Idea of Order at Key West." You hear people say it all the time, but it's true: It was like being struck by lightning. Right there, in the five minutes the reading lasted, I knew. I wanted to do what he did, even if I could only do it 1/18th as well.

I applied to graduate school in creative writing, and was accepted by 5 of the 7 programs I applied to. One was (and still is) headed by a poet I greatly admire, and he was the one who selected me; I chose to go there, not surprisingly. That was when I discovered that I did not know how to write. I don't mean in terms of spelling, grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, and so on; I've been a very good English student with a natural ear for language my whole life, and I copy-edited school papers since I was in 6th grade. What I mean is the down and dirty things you need to know about the craft of writing. This is one of the places in which poetry differs from fiction, of course, but if "Show, don't tell" is new advice to you, you need some writing courses, period. The people who work in the industry will not take your hand and walk you through those things; they will just reject the manuscript. At best, if you submit to a publishing house that farms, they'll buy the idea and have someone else write it.

Throughout grad school, I continued to publish in small journals; almost all poetry contests are enormous rip-offs now, but I also entered the few reputable ones left, and placed in a couple of them. This is all resume stuff for writers, and while it's far more crucial to poets, it certainly doesn't hurt prose writers to have it. My thesis was the submission and defense of a book-length original poetry manuscript; I defended successfully the first time, and graduated.

Degree and credentials in hand, I started shopping my manuscript to poetry publishers. I spent the next 4 years doing that. No matter how many publication credits and awards I had, most houses wouldn't even take a look without an agent; they sent those babies back unopened When I wised up and sent letters first, I got replies in varying degrees of politeness telling me to get an agent.

So, after a lot of rejection (and continued journal publication), I finally decided it was time to find an agent. That took 3 months, because finding one who believed in me and wasn't looking to fleece me alive wasn't easy; it usually isn't for an untested author. Once I did, the third publisher she shopped the manuscript to (one I'd already tried twice myself, by the way) bought it. The editor who accepted it had in fact read it before, and recognized it. He was honest enough to say that it was good enough to publish the first time, but without an agent, I wasn't professional enough to be published. This is not an uncommon point of view in publishing.

I didn't make the big bucks; I got a very fair up-front payment and receive a very small residual check every year. I didn't expect to become a millionaire writing poetry; if you're writing because you want to be rich, you picked the wrong money-making scheme. I'm a crawlingly slow writer, and I'm preparing my second book to ship off later this year. I definitely have a foot in the door, but there aren't any guarantees until you sign a multi-book contract, and I'd pretty much have to win the Pulitzer to get one of those. Once again, the wages of being a poet; it's a little easier in fiction.

Why the long story? Because from discovery to lightning-strike to years of education, practice, submitting work, rejection, and eventual success, that's how I got published. Take away any one part of it and I most likely wouldn't have been. No one else's story will be the same in the particulars, of course, but in essence, almost certainly. It's hard, and you have to work at it.

Yes, Cinderella stories do happen; the wonderful story of how Carrie was published is a prime example. But that's in maybe .001% of all cases. Mostly, they do it in a way very similar to how I did - years of hard work, dedication to writing for its own sake, and some blind luck (all of which were involved in Stephen King even writing Carrie to start with, incidentally, and it being good enough to move people). Don't depend on being Cinderella.

tell me what is the name of the book or poetry book you had published?

If I intended my public and private selves to both roam free here, I would have named it at the outset. :)

Suffice it to say, unless you read a great deal of modern poetry, you've almost certainly not heard of me (and judging by those checks, you probably haven't even if you do read a lot of it :) ).

yeah i never was a poetry reader or writer i do fiction and scifi.

I was wondering what took you so long.

ah so the great Richard A. Booth someone who critized my fanfics with good and bad critiscism. Though i think you remember me best as Koji of the Mist. Yes i have come a long way and have stopped my fanfics and moved on to trying to finish one of my fully thought out ideas.

yeah thanks but see the fanfic were to help me develop my writing style and i have almost perfected my own style so i have bassically stopped writing them. I now work on mainly my own ideas.