HOW TO GET HAPPILY PUBLISHED

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It is largely within your power to determine whether a publisher will buy the book or article you want to write or have just written and whether the public will buy it once it's released. Failures abound, however, because hardly anybody treats getting published as if it were a rational, manageable activity-like practicing law or laying bricks-in which knowledge coupled with skill and application would suffice to ensure success. Instead, almost everybody approaches the early phases of the publishing process-which have to do with finding a publisher-by trusting exclusively to luck, to merit, or to formulas.

Such behavior is thoroughly counterproductive, but it's understandable at the same time . . . and on several grounds.

In the first place, people who write are as reluctant as the rest of us to expose themselves by asking questions. Seeking information is an intimidating task in this day and age. We've all been raised to believe that-since knowledge is power -ignorance must be impotence.

Furthermore, we tend to proceed on the assumption that mastery of any field is the exclusive province of specialists and experts. Laymen-so the theory goes-can't expect to understand how to fix a leaky pipe, let alone how to get a manuscript from writer to reader. So people who aren't prevented from finding out by the fear of looking silly are often precluded by the fear that the information they'll receive will be unintelligible anyway.

But even those who are brave and energetic enough to go in search of knowledge about getting published have notin most cases-found the effort worthwhile. What every aspiring author really needs is an editor who has the time and the inclination to sit down with him and show him the industry ropes.

What he gets, however, is more likely to be a handful of books from the oppressively large number of works on breaking into print (which usually tell only parts of the truth at most) . . . or another handful from the pitifully small canon of works on subsequent aspects of the publishing process (which tend to explain the way the business works without any reference to the flesh-and-blood men and women who run it and who inevitably alter the rules to fit personal and practical demands).

To substitute for the friendly editor, we've written this book and arranged for it to offer a full and frank description of the contemporary publishing picture (complete with fallible human beings in the foreground and annotated guides to hundreds of available resources at the back). We're convinced that anyone who reads it intelligently will get [1] a good general idea of the way the publishing process normally works, [2] some valuable specific information on the ingenious tactics assorted individuals have devised to make it work for them, and [3] easy enough access to additional information about the full range of publishing options so that he'll be able to create effective publishing strategies of his own.

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