Resources: Publishing Part 1: Traditional Publishing

Chances are that if you write--and especially if you've come to this blog by way of search engines or Twitter--you want to be read and that means being published. If you're anything like I was eight months ago, your understanding of the publishing industry goes something like "write, submit to publisher, profit." There are a lot more question marks than that.

Traditional publishing, it can be argued, offers the best quality control and the highest prestige. Whenever I think about traditional publishing, I think about the Big Six, big box bookstores, and well-known periodicals. I think about agents, editors, lawyers, public relations managers, bestsellers, movie options, and merchandising rights.

When I started doing research into the possibility of self-publishing, I first did all the research I could on traditional publishing. That meant reading up on the largest publishing houses, on agents, on query letters, on copyright laws, on everything I could think of. I read blogs, I read Writer's Market, I read through publishers' websites.

If you're thinking about (or ready to start thinking about) publishing, the following list of links is for you. It's not complete, not by any means, but for me, the links were good places to start.

The Life of a Book

• Irene Harrison's Guide to Book Collecting: The Life Cycle of a Book
• Publishing Trendsetter: Life Cycle of a Book
• How a Book Gets Published

The Industry

• Kristine Kathryn Rusch: The Business Rusch
• Publishers.org
• Publishing Trends
• Writers and Editors: So, You Want to Write a Book!
• Louisa Barton: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Publishing Biz But Were Afraid to Ask
• Pens With Cojones: The Online Guide to the Publishing Industry

The Big Six

• Hachette Book Group
• HarperCollins
• MacMillan Publishers Ltd.
• Penguin Group
• Random House
• Simon & Schuster

Agents

• Neil Gaiman: Everything You Wanted to Know About Literary Agents
• WritersNet: Agents
• SFWA: Literary Agents
• Novel Publicity & Co.: Which Literary Agents to Follow Online Plus Some Basic Rules of Etiquette
• Pub Rants

Query Letters

• AgentQuery: How to Write a Query
• Charlotte Dillon: Writing a Query Letter
• SFWA: The Complete Nobody's Guide to Query Letters