Traditional Publishing
Traditional publishing is just that: the "traditional" way to get published.
The bigger the publishing house, the more they will do for you, and the better your book will probably sell. Smaller publishing houses may require you to do your own advertising and PR, but they should still help a bit with that and the distribution. With regards to the book itself, you the author hold the copyright.
Most big publishing houses offer an advance against royalties. This is a lump sum that they pay you before they publish your book. As your book sells, you earn a percentage of the book's price for each book sold; this is your royalty percentage. If your book makes enough royalties to cover your advance, you will start receiving that royalty percentage directly, usually once or twice a year.
Smaller publishers may not offer an advance, only royalties once it sells, or simply pay you one flat fee. If your book doesn't do well, the advance or a few small checks may be all you get. The one big thing you may notice about all these options is that
the publishing company pays you, not the other way around! This is what separates traditional publishing with vanity or subsidy presses and print on demand publishers, which will be talked about in the
Self-Publishing section below.
The smaller the publishing house, the more wary you should be. Always do your research! Smaller presses are more likely to go out of business suddenly, leaving you high and dry. While it may be tempting to go with a press that's just starting out and trying to get authors, it's not always the best choice.
You may have heard that it's impossible to get published traditionally without connections in the industry. This is not true, but it's a claim that is often made by vanity press companies (more on that in the
Vanity Presses & Scams post below). It's difficult to break in, but traditional publishing is the way to go if you want to make actual money on your book and see it in stores and libraries.
Agents vs. Direct Submissions
Many of the bigger publishing houses are closed to submissions from writers without an agent. If you think your book is right for one of those houses, you'll want to submit to agents first. See the
All About Agents post for more details about agents.
If you plan to look for an agent, it's best not to submit directly to publishers. Don't submit to agents and publishers at the same time. If you get an agent, they won't be too thrilled if you've submitted to every publishing house you could think of already.
Unsolicited Submissions vs. Unsolicited Manuscripts
You may see these phrases on the submission guidelines pages of publishing houses, but though they sound similar, they mean two very different things. If a house states they are not accepting unsolicited submissions or unsolicited queries, it means they are a closed house and will not read your submission. However, if they say they will not accept unsolicited
manuscripts, this means they will accept query letters. If they are interested, they will request either several chapters or your full manuscript.
Finding the Submission Guidelines
Sometimes publishers purposely bury this information on their website to make it more difficult for writers to shoot off a query or manuscript. This is to cut down on the volume of submissions they receive (especially from people who haven't done their research). Sometimes it helps to use Google to search their site. For example, you may find their guidelines more easily if you do a Google search for:
Quote:
site:bignamepublisher.com Submissions OR Guidelines
Replace the "bignamepublisher.com" with the actual URL of the site you want to search. This will allow you to search just within their site.
Receiving Rejections
You will get a lot of these, and that's normal. Even famous and well-known authors got rejected when they were starting out. See the
Dealing with Rejections post further down for more information on how to take rejections. It's not the end of the road -- keep sending them out, and keep trying to improve! The difference between published authors and unpublished ones is that the published authors kept sending out queries and manuscripts, while the unpublished ones gave up.
Useful Links
Understanding Traditional Book Publishing
Publishing Your Book
Jim C. Hines' Novel Advance Survey
Tobias Buckell's Novel Advance Survey