Becoming A Published Author
Agony and Ecstasy of Writing a Book
By Evan and Lois Swensen
Prologue
More than three decades ago, we wrote and published Bringing Your Book to Market, a small book describing how we create books and treat authors. We have not updated the book since. It has stood as the outline for our book publishing business. A few months ago, we realized that we needed to remodel the book, bring it current with the times, and include things like eBooks, which were not even invented when we first published Bringing Your Book to Market.
We determined that we’d include a few published authors’ experiences to illustrate some of the publishing procedures employed to create a book and bring it to market. The more we talked with authors about what we wanted to do, the more we realized that Bringing Your Book to Market was pretty sterile, like most business plans. We also realized that that’s the way it should be, but there was a great need for a book with real experiences about becoming a published author—a book that would tell unpublished authors about the agony and ecstasy of writing a book.
We asked some of our authors to write their stories—the story they would like to have read before their journey to becoming a published author. Authoring and publishing a book is a daunting experience. Bringing and keeping a book before potential readers is a challenging and taxing undertaking. Almost everyone has dreamed about writing a book—but few there are that have what it takes to do it. Those who gave us their story had a vision of being a published author and had what it took to make it happen.
Becoming a Published Author: Agony and Ecstasy of Writing a Book contains the stories of real writers just like you. It’s not the details. The details are written in Bringing Your Book to Market. Becoming a Published Author is the human side of publishing. It’s the heart and the soul of authorship. It’s the thrill of holding your newly published book and smelling the drying ink. It’s the heart beating experience of seeing your book on a bookstore shelf. It’s the dark day when you receive your manuscript back from the editor dripping in red ink. It’s the agony of rewrites and rewrites; of book signings where no one shows up; of the morning you took all day to correct one sentence, only to take all afternoon changing it back to the way it was in the first place; of the Friday you gave up and declared yourself a writing failure. It’s the ecstasy of the following Monday when you’re energized with a breakthrough idea that propels you forward with vision and determination; of the fan mail from a perfect stranger telling you they read your book and loved it, and compared your writing to a famous author—past or present. Becoming a published author gives you celebrity status with both writers and readers; but, particularly among published authors who share your agony and ecstasy.
If you’ve written a book, if you’re writing a book, or if you’re thinking about writing a book, contact Publication Consultants. We invite you to become a published author with your agony and ecstasy story.
