Shannon Page.
The Usual Path to Publication: 27 stories about 27 ways in.
Book View Café. 2016
It looks straightforward from the outside, doesn’t it?
Write an amazing book, get an agent, get a book deal, and voila! Fame and fortune!
As you will see in these essays, however, a writer is vastly more likely to follow a complex, switch-backing trail than a straightforward path, one strewn with the boulders of rejection letters, the quicksand of endless revisions, and the snake pits of publishing house reorganizations, business failures, and would-be scammers. To the right is the sheer cliff of despair; to the left, the impassible mountain of the slush pile.
Fear not, brave writer! There is a destination at the end of that journey. Here are twenty-seven tales to inspire and encourage you—if they don’t send you off to a more accessible pursuit, like lion-taming or rocket science or spinning straw into gold.