How to Find Your Publishing Path
By Camille Pagán
On a recent group coaching call, one of my clients asked if there was a particular trait most successful novelists shared.
I didn’t blink before answering: “Flexibility.”
Like nearly all things in life, publishing changes. Algorithms, publishers, agents, editors, readers, and marketing methods aren’t static. To stay in this business—which is how you create a body of work and a readership to go with it—you must be nimble.
To be clear, flexibility doesn’t mean giving up your dreams when things don’t work out. Let’s say your goal is to publish a book club hit—but more than a hundred agents passed on your latest manuscript. Don’t start using your writing time to study for the LSAT or plan for something else you don’t really want.
Instead, you might consider opportunities that don’t require an agent, like self-publishing, small presses, or hybrid publishing. Or you could set aside that manuscript for now and write a new draft with book club potential. (Who knows—you might even be able to sell them both in a two-book deal! This exact thing has happened to several of my clients.) And if you haven’t already, you could hire someone to give you honest feedback on your query and/or story.
With that in mind, I want to offer three signs your fiction career could benefit from a fresh approach:
You find yourself thinking or saying you have “one shot.”
After my debut novel flopped, I believed it was over for that book … and maybe even my career. Ten years later, I self-published it with a new cover and a few key edits, and now earn royalties from it every single month. You have sooo many shots—but sometimes you need to switch baskets or even courts to take them.
You feel stuck.
The best way to get unstuck? Remind yourself that you actually do have options. Then go find them. Attend a conference. Talk to writers with good ideas—or better yet, great questions. Study authors who’ve been successful with approaches you previously dismissed. I recently connected one client considering hybrid publishing with another client who’d published with a hybrid press. Their conversation helped the first novelist determine her next move.
You’re overly invested in a particular outcome or path.
Catch yourself thinking something like, “I have to sign with X agent or Y publishing house,” or “This novel must sell 10,000 copies or I can’t justify writing another”? I’ve been there—and that kind of rigidity has never served me. In fact, most of my “big breaks” were surprises or unplanned pivots. (I talk more about this on episode 112 of the podcast if you’d like to listen.)
When it comes to your fiction career, be clear on your destination … but willing to take a detour or three. More often than not, those detours turn into the most rewarding publishing paths.
By Camille Pagán
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“Not since A Dog’s Purpose have I been so besotted by a novel’s canine. Just like a good dog, Harold and this beautiful book will break your heart open and mend it all at once. “ —Colleen Oakley, USA Today bestselling author of Jane & Dan at the End of the World
In this delightfully heartwarming novel, an elderly dog is determined to help his grieving owner find a reason to go on after loss. Now, if only he’d stop getting in his way by being so very . . . human.
Harold may be an aging mutt—but Amelia May, the romance novelist who adopted him, taught him a thing or two about the human heart before she died. And she also left Harold with a final task: to help her partner, Miguel, find love again.
Trouble is, the grief-ridden recluse rarely goes out, not even to the bookstore he and Amelia owned together. Now it’s in danger of going under, and when a renowned author doesn’t show up for his event, it pushes the store’s already precarious finances into the red. In a final attempt to save the bookstore, Miguel and Harold set out to find the no-show and insist he fulfill his obligation. But instead, they’re greeted by Fiona, his sunny yet secretive sister.
Fiona is intent on protecting her brother’s privacy—and to Harold’s horror, she doesn’t like dogs. But her precocious eleven-year-old daughter, who’s also named Amelia, immediately befriends Harold . . . who can’t help but wonder if his Amelia was right when she said there are no coincidences in life.
Harold’s quickly running out of time to accomplish his mission, but if he can just convince his infuriatingly stubborn person to let Fiona in, he’s certain Miguel will find something far more important than a missing author: his own happy ending.
Uplifting, smartly observed, and hilariously insightful, Dog Person is as undeniably charming as its beloved narrator, Harold, and offers a much-needed reminder that while not all love is unconditional, it is still always worthwhile.
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
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