PATHS TO PUBLICATION
There are many ways to achieve your publishing dream. Margaret James talks to four authors with very different routes to seeing their books in print
You’ve written your novel and you’d like to see it commercially published.
How do you arrange that?
You could enter and hopefully win (or be placed in) a novel-writing competition. Sophie Duffy’s The Generation Game (Legend Press) won the Yeovil Novel Prize and the Luke Bitmead Writer’s Bursary, and Su Bristow won the Exeter Novel Prize with her debut novel Sealskin (Orenda Books).
But winning literary prizes isn’t the only way.
Small press success
‘I enjoy reading murder mysteries and thought I would have a go at writing one,’ says crime novelist Bernie Steadman. ‘Realising I knew nothing, I took an online self-editing course. I joined writers’ forums. I subscribed to Writing Magazine which inspired me to do regular writing exercises, so I learned about character, structure and plot. I soon understood that a first draft is exactly that, and the real craft would come during the editing phase.