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Why Publishing Your Book Is Like Looking For a Job

It seems that the article I wrote about being bad writers, touched the potato to more than one. I have received several counter-articles … Although I would rather call them continuations.
The one that I present to you today was written by Cris Mandarica, you already know it well. She’s the one behind the gun, pun intended. Author of the book Behind the Gun published on Libros, Cris is a regular on my blog and on my networks and a writer who should be closely checked if you like crime fiction.
Without further ado, I’ll leave you with her.

Why posting is like looking for a job

In December Jaume published in this, his blog, an article in which he told us that we were bad writers, and we knew it. Reading the advice he gave us (which was nothing that we did not know but which is very necessary and, even so, many continue to ignore it) I realized that trying to publish a book and sell it is the same as trying to get a job.

1. Send your resume

When you want to get a job, the first thing you do is send your resume; You do it after having seen an offer on the net (on specific job search portals) or in newspapers, or spontaneously, because you have been looking for possible companies, you liked that one, you think you can fit in, you like what you think that they can offer you and contact them. You have previously inquired about the company to try to find out your possibilities, because it is useless to send your resume to a law firm if you have studied nursing.
Your CV is made up of your training and your professional experience and, together with it, you also send a letter where you introduce yourself and in which you try to personally address who is going to read it. In it you tell him why you would be a good candidate to work in his company, that is, you sell yourself.

2. Personal interview

If your resume passes the first filter of the company, they will call you to do an interview. You put all the facilities of the day and time to go, you go with your best clothes and with the best disposition, and you enter the room and shake hands firmly. They talk to you and you retell your resume and also answer their questions to the best of your ability. Normally, you will have to pass several interviews: base recruiter, head of personnel, the person for whom you are going to work and the person in charge of authorizing the hiring.
You have patience, you look forward to being called for the next interview, you come back, and you do not mind repeating the same thing to different people although in each new appointment you try to contribute something new, things that may have been left in the inkwell in the first meeting. You do not get tired, you want that job and you are willing to carry out the necessary interviews in order to get it.

3. Hiring, or not

If you are hired, in a last meeting you will negotiate the conditions (such as salary, hours and vacations), according to your ability and your needs, but it is true that you will not accept the job for a salary that barely gives you to eat at Unless you are just starting out and the need to gain experience prevails rather than to have a decent salary (I think we’ve all been through that).
It can also happen that they don’t call you. And what happens next? You start over, but the same again? I don’t know what you do, but I’m trying to ask what the reason why I wasn’t selected was. Sometimes they don’t answer, but when they do I get additional information so I don’t mess with it again in a future interview.
After a year applying this method in the job search, you may think that I have not achieved anything (because I am still where I was), but the truth is that each time I am higher in the selection process (in the last one it was a heads up that it was decided because I do not have the possibility of immediate incorporation, small detail); therefore, I am getting closer to my goal.

Seek to publish your book

Now what I’m wondering is why most ghost writers don’t do this when it comes to trying to get their book published. That is to say:
1. Send a letter with your training and your publications, addressed to a publisher in which you think you can fit in because you have bothered to seek information about it previously; and send it to where the publisher itself indicates (either an email or postal address) and how they need it to be sent (for example, if they ask for the first thirty pages or the first five chapters, you do not have to send the entire book).
2. Have a conversation with the publisher if they give you the opportunity; try to find out what they are looking for to convince them that you can offer it to them. Wait for them to respond, be patient, answer all the questions they ask you, and wait again, because you want to publish with them and you will arm yourself with all the patience that is necessary in order to achieve it.
3. Negotiate the conditions if they accept you, because a novel has required work and that work has a price. And if they don’t accept you, try to know what it is that you have failed to improve it for future shipments. And try again, again and again, because you are sure that you want to publish your book and you are not going to stop until you get it.
Writing is a job, so if you want to make a living from it, why don’t you take it as such?