In the first of what will be a regular series of tips from published authors, Catherine Mason provides her top five pieces of advice on getting published.
Mason’s first book was: A Computer In The Art Room: The Origins of British Computer Arts 1950-1980, and she was also one of the editors of: White Heat Cold Logic: British Computer Art 1960-1980.
1. Do your research. Locate the main players in your field who already publish similar books, and approach them first. Find out their preferred proposal formats (the publisher’s website will tell you this information often in great detail – follow it).
2. Get someone on board the proposal with a strong academic background; and/or write from a relevant university’s department.
3. Get Lucky! After being rejected 14 times, my own book was finally published because I happened to meet, purely by chance, another of the publisher’s authors, who personally introduced me.
4. With this in mind, tell everyone you meet what you are doing, you never know who may have a useful idea or be able to help directly.
5. Finally, don’t give up. Keep trying. I believe that if it is meant to happen, it will!