Are you tired of rejections? Are you tired of submitting to markets where
the submissions outnumber the needs of publishers 1,000 to 1? No one enjoys
constant rejection of work that they have poured their soul into.
Well, you don't have to suffer that anymore. Even good manuscripts
are rejected in today's publishing world because the person who wrote them
is either unpublished or under published.
It is not because your work isn't good.
It is not because your story did not impress the editor.
It is because big names sell, and there are only so many lines
available in a printed publication or only so many slots to fill in the
print book industry.
These publishers are in the business to make money. Big names make
money. It's a matter of semantics. How many "unknowns" have you seen on the
New York Times Best Seller List lately? Does this mean that they will never
publish unknowns? No. It means that in the world of high finance and
publishing house mergers, of both well-known magazines and book publishers,
the bottom line is a profit margin, and the new authors published each year
by such conglomerates is dwindling. Sure it happens. Occasionally a new
author sneaks into the big publishing houses, but the chances are very
slim.
Are you really interested in getting published? Once you are a
published author, editors look at you in a completely different light. A
few years ago, my only publication credits were poems in a couple of
magazines that didn't even pay with copies. Today, I have articles
published in Writer's Digest, Fiction Writer and many others. I have a
novel and a collection of short stories published electronically and in
print. I co-edit an online magazine and conduct workshops and speaking
engagements at writers' conventions and gatherings. I owe this success to a
love of writing, a desire to learn, a dedication to my craft, hard work and
to the electronic publishing industry.
It was an electronic magazine publisher who bought my first short
story and an e-book publisher who bought my first book.
Am I saying that if you turn to e-books and e-zines you will
automatically have your work accepted every time? No, you won't. I still
get rejections every week. Rejection slips will still be arriving in the
mail, but I am saying that if you present quality work, your chances will
increase dramatically, and mixed in with those nasty "No's" will be the
wonderful acceptance note that says, "Yes! We want to publish your story."
Don't get left out. Look to electronic publications and Cyberspace
for the boost your career needs. You can only grow from there.

Here is how.
I have not designed this book as a primer for the mechanics of
writing. You probably already have some of those. If you do not, you should
get at least one or two. If you bought this book, you feel you are ready
for publication or at least close to it. I have divided the information
into seven parts:
What is electronic publishing?

Nuts & bolts of writing.

What are your rights?

Finding agents and publishers.

Self-promotion.

Alternative publishing ideas.

How to use this book effectively and the Appendix.
Although we will touch on some of the basics such as grammar, some
writing exercises and character profiles to kick-start your creative
process, the main purpose of this book is to help you get published. My
second goal is to show you how to promote yourself and your work after you
are published. To accomplish this task, I include a series of real
questions and answers from successful authors and comments from
professional editors taken directly from a survey that my column, Ask Dr.
Web-Write, conducted for Millennium Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine.
The general focus of this book is writing and selling fiction, but
the techniques and submission procedures apply to nonfiction as well.
Whether you write short stories, nonfiction articles, essays or novels,
using the tips in this book can help you get published. The methods I talk
about really work, and I know because I've used them.
I will address issues that concern professional authors as well as
those just getting started. If you want to get published, you are on the
right track. You have this book in your hands or on the computer screen if
you are reading it electronically. How you use it is up to you.
First, let's discuss some definitions of a writer. See if you
recognize yourself.
Masochist, fool, hermit, sadist, slave, dreamer and a thousand more
descriptive adjectives describe us, but most of all, we are passionate
lovers.
Our love?
Words.
Recently, I was in the break room of the local college where I
work. I was sipping coffee, the favorite nectar of writers. (Well okay, the
favorite next to straight bourbon.) I was thinking about what I would say
in this book that could really help a struggling, new writer when I
happened to overhear a couple of electronics professors talking. They were
talking about a teachers' conference they had recently attended, and one
said to the other, "You know how those English teachers are. In love with
words. Every one of them."
"Yeah," the other one said, "Them and writers. All a bunch of
kooks."
They both laughed heartily and went back to their classes.
I laughed too. They were right. We are in love with words. Why else
would we labor over one sentence for hours, writing and rewriting, putting
a comma in and thirty minutes later, taking it out again? Why else would we
change the word laughed to chuckled to grinned to guffawed to smiled and
finally back to laughed again only to delete it in the end and start over?
Why else would we spend hours in front of our computer or
typewriter tapping out the lives of our fictional characters while our real
life families sit in the next room watching TV, reading or doing whatever
they do without us? Come on, admit it. Most of you don't really know how
they spend their time when you are slaving away, deep into a heated plot,
oblivious to all but your character's lives. Do you?
I know that I am not really sure how my husband, Joe, spends his
time when I am writing.
Who else would isolate themselves into hermit-like status, tethered
by invisible chains of their own design to a computer or typewriter for
days or weeks or even months while they finish that "one last chapter?"
Only masochists would repeatedly set themselves up for rejection by
pouring out their souls on paper and shipping that soul off to strangers
who may give it a glance, then toss it onto the slush pile and let it
languish beneath hundreds of other souls sent by equally masochistic
people.
Who else but sadists would sit at a typewriter hour after hour
while the rest of their family waits eagerly for them to join in the
celebration of some holiday or other?
Why are we like this?
Because we can't help ourselves.
It is inborn--a flaw--a birth defect--a glorious gift. You can't
change it any more than you can change your DNA so stop trying.
Give in. Let that latent Hemingway and long hidden Poe surface. Let
them breathe and sing sweet songs to you. Let them show you what you were
born to do. Let them write.