While there are many books available about how to write, few focus on the profession of being an author. How to find a publisher? How to prepare a manuscript for submission, contracts, editing, promotion, working with booksellers, and more.
Deborah Hunn is a lecturer in creative writing at Curtin University in Western Australia and Georgia Richter has taught creative writing, professional writing and editing at universities in Melbourne and Western Australia, and is now the fiction, narrative non-fiction and poetry publisher at Freemantle Press.
Their book is called How To Be An Author: The Business of Being A Writer in Australia and they joined Nine To Noon to discuss the business.
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Hunn tells Kathryn Ryan there’s often a big gap between aspiration and the actual writing itself.
“There are many people who have an aspiration to write and have a great idea, but actually getting it down on paper is a really disciplined process. There are strategies that can help with that, but there’s also the question of individual drive.”
Richter says one good strategy is to find a tribe of people who are also trying to write, and not necessarily in a formal education context.
“For many people, having others around you who are developing and working alongside you can be a real incentive to keep going and a real learning ground in itself. Any tribe, I think, is just fine.”
Hunn agrees that having people who can read your drafts is vital, even if you do need to take their often contradictory criticisms with your own judgement.
Richter says that, if you want an audience, there are things to think about like how to present your book in a way that’s appealing to a publisher and how you might develop an author brand.
“You can imagine that, if you’re a children’s writer, you’re interacting with communities of children’s writers and beginning to build connections with that community. If you’re an adult writer, you might be thinking; where are my readers and where do I hang out.
“Brand starts off as something quite nebulous but it may also include setting up a website where you can blog or talk about things relevant to me and to the brand you’re building around the writing that you do.”
Another key thing that many aspiring authors often get wrong is to approach a publisher or journal the way the request they be contacted, rather than just sending in your work.
“For heaven’s sake, actually read the journal you’re aiming to publish in, look at the kind of work they publish, look at the submission guidelines – don’t just go in there cold. That’s the kind of information you need to gather as a writer,” Hunn says.
“The same is true of publishers. Look at what the publisher is actually asking you for, think about what books the publisher produces.”
