Everyone's a writer. It's true. The number of people who have thought about writing for a living is astronomical. And ironically, many of them fail, not because of lack of talent, but because they don't know how to go about getting a book published. There is a procedure that you have to follow to have any chance at all. Book publishing is a competitive field. Publishers get hundreds of manuscripts crossing their desks each week. Getting YOURS seen takes some doing.

The first thing you need to know is that nobody, and I do mean NOBODY is going to accept unsolicited material. There are many reasons for this. One of the main ones today is because of all the lawsuits flying around from writers claiming that their work has been stolen. It's just not worth it for the publishers to go through all the hassles. So any reputable publisher is going to require you to ask first for permission. This way they have it on record in case there are any claims of theft.

But another reason you can't send unsolicited material is simply because of the fact that publishers get so many manuscripts on a regular basis. They just don't have the time to go through them all. So, unsolicited submissions don't even get looked at because of the time constraints. So, if you're going to send something, ask permission FIRST. Otherwise, quite honestly, you are going to be wasting your time.

The next thing you need to know is that all submissions must be done in a professional manner. The space of this article doesn't allow me to go into detail as to what this means. It is an involved process. You can't just slap something together and toss it in an envelope. The more professional the presentation, the better your chance of getting it looked at.

In my signature, you'll find a review of a great resource that will go over all of these things in great detail. What most people don't realize is that book submission, for the purpose of getting published, is involved and has to be done just so because of all the competition. So please don't go into this until you know exactly what's involved. It just may mean the difference between getting published and not.