Within the publishing community, who you know is almost as important as what you know. Yes, it is important to pitch an excellent book proposal or manuscript to the right publisher. As an editor and an author, I also understand people buy (books or manuscripts) from people they know, like and trust. How can you know more publishing people? From my years in publishing, one of the challenges is keeping track of the moving people.
As a writer, I’ve written two proposals which earned a six-figure advance. Years ago, one of my six-figure book deals was cancelled because my New York editor had changed companies. When your editor leaves the publishing house, then your book becomes an “orphan” and as an author you lose your internal champion for your book. Through this hard-earned personal experience, I learned how each book needs an editor who is your champion for the book.
How does a new author with no connections, begin to get connected to publishing people? Everyone can use a social network which has over 66.8 million active monthly users: LinkedIN. This network is primarily business related and publishing is a business.
To get connected, you need to take several actions:
- If you aren’t on LinkedIN then join today and fill out your profile including with your photo.
- Rework your LinkedIN profile to show your activity in publishing. Do you write for magazines? Have you published books? Or possibly you have some other explicit publishing role such as leading a local writer’s group. If you have these types of qualifications, then add them to your LinkedIN profile.
- Begin to send connection requests to different people in publishing. These people could be book editors, literary agents, magazine editors, authors and many other roles. In some cases, you will want to send them a little personalized message with your connection invitation. In other cases, you simply send out the generic invitation that you want to connect with the person.
For many years, I received LinkedIN invitations and ignored them. I had very few connections on LinkedIN and was not connected. Then I began to look at the background of the person and for most people, I accepted their invitation to connect. My number of connections increased and my public profile says the common “over 500 connections.” The real number of my LinkedIN connections, as of this writing, is over 19,400. I understand the upper limit is 30,000. These connections are varied with many different roles (mostly within publishing) Here’s the critical reason you want to be connected: when I need to reach someone that I’ve not emailed or called in a long-time, I check their LinkedIN contact information.
While there is a lot of movement within the publishing community, when they change positions or companies or physical location, everyone takes their LinkedIN account with them. This account belongs to the individual and is a way to consistently keep up and reach them. I’ve gone decades and not connected with some people, then I use their LinkedIN contact information to reconnect with them for a specific purpose such as I have a new book and would like to have their endorsement. I’ve found I can often reach these publishing leaders through LinkedIN.
LinkedIN has a lot of other functions as well but being connected and maintaining those connections is one of the basics and best reasons to consistently use this network.
W. Terry Whalin, a writer and acquisitions editor lives in Colorado. A former magazine editor and former literary agent, Terry is an acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing. He has written more than 60 nonfiction books including Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams and Billy Graham. To help writers catch the attention of editors and agents, Terry wrote his bestselling Book Proposals That $ell, 21 Secrets To Speed Your Success. Check out his free Ebook, Platform Building Ideas for Every Author. His website is located at: www.terrywhalin.com. Connect with Terry on Twitter, Facebook, his blog and LinkedIn.
