It never fails. If I go to a con where there are a lot of beginners, if I teach a course, if I just happen to meet with people who have secret aspirations of writing (particularly fantasy and science fiction) I either get asked what the way into professional writing is, or I get asked for introductions.

And it’s extremely silly. Even when I was traditionally published, and even when I had a very good relationship with one of the houses, my recommendation was never worth much. No one’s is, unless the person recommending is a best-seller and very, very, very forceful.

But for years this was the most likely way in. You met a published author and asked for an introduction to a publisher. And I’d be a total hypocrite if I didn’t admit here that young Sarah tried this. Stupidly, as is my wont, with someone who’d sold only one book more than ten years before, and knew no one. Funny thing, the one thing she told me was never to write for Baen. Which turned out to be my most steady and reliable publisher for years. Eh.

Let that anecdote serve its purpose: the way in is highly individual, and always was. And what works for me, or for you, or for Bob down the street is completely different from what will work for James, Kate, or Anne from Sausalito.

This is not in fact a field where they look at your resume, ask you about your experience writing cereal sales copy, then shake your hand and welcome you to the company.

Um…. right now there’s a very good chance there will be no company, for one, and that the person shaking your hand will be…. yourself. And that even those way above you in the field hierarchy will have no clue if you’ll sell or not.

In a way that later was always true, but now it is head-scratchingly so because of the rapid — catastrophic — tech change and the things it’s done to the field. Because the path in is not just a combination of how you write, what you write, your personality, what you’re willing to do to promote, what’s working in promotion at the time, and well… the incalculable factor we’ll call luck. I.e. hitting at just a time that a lot of people discover you who are hungry for your stuff.

Yes, there’s ways to game all of it. But some of it might be impossible for you, specifically to do. And there are other ways to game it that are probably perfect for you but you never thought of.

These things are startlingly clear in retrospect. I’ll give some ways that worked so you get an idea how things change and how they work or don’t for people, sometimes in baffling ways.

For a while the way to get accepted — I hear, this was before I came to the US and possibly before I was born — was to start at the lowest level of magazines, sell enough short stories for almost nothing, and acquire a public, then study the next level, and start bombarding them with stories till the door opened, and so on, until you made it to novel selling. That was said to work. Again, it was so long ago I have no idea if it was true or just the story writers told people. (Writers tell good stories. Not necessarily true ones.)

After that, because the markets concentrated and became fewer — this is normal, btw, for the industrial process, and mean of delivering story available at the time. Stories were sold in paper bricks, and it was cheaper to produce paper bricks in big cities, and from a centralized office — there were fewer opportunities to climb-the-ladder. Also short story markets died for a variety of reasons, not all mismanagement or market pressures, though a lot of them were. (Meaning nothing to do with taste, just the delivery system was against short stories.)

At that point, knowing someone and being introduced to someone was a way to get in.

Arguably this was when I came in. I attended a workshop and was introduced to my first publisher, and had a chance to pitch. So just so you know this system lasted a long time.

It’s just that through most of that time, you could also get in “over the transom”: i.e. by sending books in cold, and their being accepted that way.

But the expense of keeping readers on staff meant this entry point was stopped in most houses by the time I came in. In fact, though some theoretically did it, the only one where people still, rarely, got in that way was Baen. (And at Baen it was painfully slow and iffy, and the best way to advance that way was to come to the attention of the publisher ANOTHER way. I.e. I had Darkship Thieves in JB’s reading pile when in an online chat, I caught his attention and he asked if I had an Urban fantasy to sell him. I assumed he’d read and didn’t like DST. Turned out no. It hadn’t yet made it to his desk. Eh.)

By the time I came in, even getting into the more “select” magazines depended on going to cons, meeting and charming the editors. It wasn’t a guarantee, but it advanced you. I did in fact start selling shorts to the big mags after attending my first conference with editors (World Fantasy.)

Another way to get in and hopefully become known when I came in (But it never gelled for me) was to collaborate with a big name. It gave you a chance to get the same readership, if the match was good.

After I’d broken in, things changed again. Around 2006 I realized the way to not only get in but be catapulted to “will get support and publicity” was to self-publish (which was becoming affordable at the time) and then find a way to sell a lot of the books, be it craft fairs or gun shows (waves at friend.) Massive quantities at that time being anywhere upwards of 5k books. Sooner or later a publisher would notice and come calling. Or you could go to a con, talk to a publisher, and tell him/her what you’d done.

Because you were a proven quantity who “knows how to sell” — a rare thing for writers — you were brought in with support and publicity, not as a disposable mid-lister. (And I’m not going to explain that one here. It would be another post.)

In retrospect, I can say the way to make it in 12 years ago, and get that level of support or higher, would be to publish on Amazon and then spend a small fortune putting ads in places online congruent with the book. (So for traditional fantasy, probably D & D sites.) Become a phenomenon, get publishers calling.

This last one burns me slightly, because technically we COULD have done it, but it would require my having enough self-confidence to borrow money for the publicity part. Even if I borrowed from my parents. And I didn’t have that.

Anyway, what is the best way now? I have no idea. Five years ago, it was to do a lot of market analysis, discover underserved sub-genres, where even the really badly written stuff sold well, and then write to that. Write a lot to that. It absolutely doesn’t help me. As in at all.

Also, the goal is no longer to be traditionally published. It always jars me to see people in writers’ groups study the strategy to come to the attention of a traditional publisher, like this is the brass ring. It’s not.

Both in money and distro, paper bricks published by a big house are rapidly losing to the happy anarchy of indie. This will probably be more so with AI-voice-generated readings. Maybe not, but I think so, particularly as it gets better.

HOWEVER traditional publishing can be part of your strategy to become known. If you get in with a house that’s known for having a following in your area (the only one I can think of is Baen but I’m not savvy on romance or other genres, as to houses) it can give you a boost to finding your indie audience, and I’ve recommended a lot of authors try dual.

There are dangers. A lot of the contracts right now are feral. (Started with short stories 20? years ago.) They will make rights grabs for everything in that world/with those characters/etc. So, see a lawyer before signing anything. BUT it could be a strategy. For now. Who knows in five years?

Meanwhile there are people who make it in in ways no one, not even them, understand, and become successes when they should not. Because according to the experts, they’re not writing fast enough, their books aren’t the right kind, and the books are too long, and– Waves at Mackey Chandler.

Heck, the late Doug Dandridge who published his books to get them out of his desk, supposedly did everything wrong, but made six figures out of his books for the remaining years of his (alas) too short life. He was an amiable man and a prince among writers, and he freely admitted he had no idea why he was selling that well. Which was hilarious to hear.

So…

Don’t ask me for the way in. I don’t know it. The way I got in has crumbled, the bridge has collapsed. Also I might or might not have set it on fire ahead of me. (No, you read that right. Not behind.) Also I never got that far in, and intend to find my way to the top, somehow.

I’m told there is no way. Particularly for one of my repugnant, admitted and frankly loud convictions. That’s fine.

Up ahead, behind that seemingly solid wall? I hear a series of clicks. And I suspect if I press just right in the required place, at the right time, the wall will slide away and the path be revealed.

No, don’t try to follow me. It will probably collapse after me. Instead, watch, listen, see the crazy people taking risky paths, invent new variations on those, then run.

Before the way collapses.