Thread by @CollinsMandy

Thread about writing and publishing books.

(You can blame @mimithurgood and @MJtheCentrist.)

A lot of people come to me because they want to write (and publish) a book and they want help with ghostwriting or editing or writing coaching.

Most don't have the faintest notion what it involves. There are a few things to understand about this world.

First, the book you want to write isn't necessarily suitable for publication. If you are writing a book that spills all your sordid family secrets, without consent from those you're writing about, what you're writing is evidence for the defamation suit against you.

By all means write it, but get it off your chest and then lock it away securely, or burn it.

Now to publication, and we'll start with traditional publishing. First and foremost, understand that publishing is a business. It exists to make money for the publisher.

The publisher takes all the risk in this model. And therefore they will only take on a manuscript they believe will sell enough copies to make them a profit. And remember, they incur all the costs like editing, cover design, printing and distribution.

In South Africa, the biggest book market is non-fiction, and the majority of books are commissioned, not unsolicited manuscripts. If fiction is your thing, remember there are four major publishers, each publishes five or so fiction titles a year.

BUT each of them receives about 300 unsolicited manuscripts a month. Do the maths on your odds of getting published...

Plus, in SA, a bestseller is regarded as 3000 copies, most authors are delighted if they sell around 1000, and you earn about R8-10 per copy as an author.

Basically, even if you write a bestseller in SA, you're not going to be rich.

Writing for the international maker requires finding a good agent first, and then hoping they can sell your book to a publisher. And even then, it could bomb.

Ah! But there's self publishing! Yes.

And even if you go the e-book route, you will need someone to design the cover, edit the text, lay it out and format it, all of which costs money, if you want something with a professional finish that is well done.

Hard copies = printing.

And if you have hard copies, they need to be distributed. And not all of the booksellers buy centrally. Some require that you negotiate with every branch individually.

Are you up for that?

Now, let's turn to the writing. Most books are between 50K and 80K words long. Single spaced, that's about 100-160 typed pages.

And you not only have to produce those words, they have to sustain a reader's attention. Fiction or non-fiction, you have to tell a story.

This requires careful planning. A story may have a beginning, a middle and an end, but you don't always start the telling at the beginning.

And you have to craft every sentence. What do you leave out? What do you include? What senses will you employ to evoke setting, emotion?

So let's assume you do all of that. You have a first draft now, probably after several months of writing. This is just the first step. Now you'll start the first of many rewrites. Some author colleagues of mine do 13 or 14 drafts before they are ready to approach publishers.

And then you submit to publishers in the hope one of them will pick it up from the slush pile and publish. And then the editors will start working on polishing it.

So if you're up for all that, by all means write your book. But understand that you will work very hard, for a very long time, unpaid, and if it is finally published you may not earn very much either. The JK Rowlings and John Grishams of the world are very few and far between.