The Word on the Street

The Word on the Street National Book and Magazine Festival ended yesterday with a great turnout.  I attended the lecture, An Insider's Guide to Getting Published lead by Cynthia Good, Director of the Creative Book Publishing Program at Humber College. 

Some helpful tips she gave to writers:

Create a platform to promote yourself even before you publish a book.  Editors and literary agents want to see that you're capable of marketing and branding yourself.

Research the market: know the current trends in publishing, what are the most popular genres? Go to book launches and conferences and get to know people in the business.

Take a creative writing course, gather a group of friends/peers to give you feedback on your writing or find a mentor to help you through the process.

The second lecture I attended included Patrick Crean and Craig Pyette, two seasoned editors that have worked in publishing for years, imparted advice on what they hate to see in newly submitted manuscripts.  For the most part, they gave stranger than fiction anecdotes on how people corner them, badger them to read their writing and the odd condition many manuscripts are in when they are submitted.  Best take away: they hate bad writing such as riddled with clichés, using the same turn of phrase, tired plotlines etc.