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The Insider's Guide to Getting Published
Written by one of the most successful agents and packagers in the book publishing industry, The Insider's Guide to Getting Published (originally entitled The Awful Truth About Publishing) is a look at everything an aspiring writer needs to know to jump-start a career as a successful author.
176 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1996
8 people want to read
About the author
John Boswell
34 books5 followersLibrarian note: There is more than one author by this name in the database. See authors with similar names.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 17, 2022
I’m slowly working my way through an entire bookshelf of books on writing and publishing. (I have a lot of books…)
This one is too dated to be of practical use. I found it interesting in a historical/nostalgic sense, but I’m in a niche audience in that regard. It was first published as The Awful Truth About Publishing in 1983. This updated and more positively titled The Insider’s Guide to Getting Published was published in 1997. That was before the rise of Amazon and on-line book sales, before eBooks, before BookScan started providing publishers with point of sale data, before GoodReads, before social media, before independent publishing became viable and not stigmatized “vanity publishing,” and at a time when there were multiple national bookstore chains (i.e. Borders, Waldenbooks), and book proposals were typed up and mailed (never e-mailed) directly from authors to editors (no agent required). A lot has changed in 25 years.
There is a little useful timeless advice here, just not enough to make this worth tracking down. Boswell’s expertise comes from his work as a literary agent and successful book packager. Book packagers basically come up with a salable concept and find someone to write it, or a publisher might hire them to put together a project based on their concept. So his approach is of a practical, business-oriented nature and he’s unsentimentally frank.
The goal here is to create a book that will sell first and foremost, not to write a book because it’s a book you want to write or that reflects your specific expertise (unless the book you want to write happens to meet the criteria Boswell lays out for a book that will sell). It’s heavily geared toward nonfiction, and it’s a book specifically about landing a traditional publishing deal. There’s no writing advice here, this is all about pitch and presentation.
The timeless part comes in with basics like book title, identifying your audience, competition, honing your idea, putting together a book proposal, etc. but the methods have often shifted, sometimes dramatically. He suggests using Books in Print subject volumes at the library to look for competing titles and calling publishers to confirm an editor still works there—the internet was still young then. In fact, in another section, he addresses the boom in computer literacy books, including a slew of books about how to use the internet. Yes, people needed a book back then (this was published a year before Google was born).
Another notable element he omits is author platform, which has become a significant element and sometimes deciding factor in a book proposal. I suppose social media is a significant driver there, even if publishers regularly find the actual correlation between social media numbers and book sales is unpredictable at best. Makes me wonder what book publishing will look like 25 years from now….
This one is too dated to be of practical use. I found it interesting in a historical/nostalgic sense, but I’m in a niche audience in that regard. It was first published as The Awful Truth About Publishing in 1983. This updated and more positively titled The Insider’s Guide to Getting Published was published in 1997. That was before the rise of Amazon and on-line book sales, before eBooks, before BookScan started providing publishers with point of sale data, before GoodReads, before social media, before independent publishing became viable and not stigmatized “vanity publishing,” and at a time when there were multiple national bookstore chains (i.e. Borders, Waldenbooks), and book proposals were typed up and mailed (never e-mailed) directly from authors to editors (no agent required). A lot has changed in 25 years.
There is a little useful timeless advice here, just not enough to make this worth tracking down. Boswell’s expertise comes from his work as a literary agent and successful book packager. Book packagers basically come up with a salable concept and find someone to write it, or a publisher might hire them to put together a project based on their concept. So his approach is of a practical, business-oriented nature and he’s unsentimentally frank.
The goal here is to create a book that will sell first and foremost, not to write a book because it’s a book you want to write or that reflects your specific expertise (unless the book you want to write happens to meet the criteria Boswell lays out for a book that will sell). It’s heavily geared toward nonfiction, and it’s a book specifically about landing a traditional publishing deal. There’s no writing advice here, this is all about pitch and presentation.
The timeless part comes in with basics like book title, identifying your audience, competition, honing your idea, putting together a book proposal, etc. but the methods have often shifted, sometimes dramatically. He suggests using Books in Print subject volumes at the library to look for competing titles and calling publishers to confirm an editor still works there—the internet was still young then. In fact, in another section, he addresses the boom in computer literacy books, including a slew of books about how to use the internet. Yes, people needed a book back then (this was published a year before Google was born).
Another notable element he omits is author platform, which has become a significant element and sometimes deciding factor in a book proposal. I suppose social media is a significant driver there, even if publishers regularly find the actual correlation between social media numbers and book sales is unpredictable at best. Makes me wonder what book publishing will look like 25 years from now….
February 27, 2018
Gives some serious structure to the task ahead of me. Obviously a ton of things have changed, but I can handle a lot of mutatis mutandis once I have an overall conceptual framework to operate upon.
March 19, 2024
Highly recommended. I'd echo the Oregonian: "This book is so informative that there is a temptation here to quote it all." Brisk, practical, and funny. I loved it.
December 27, 2010
Ugh. If you just want to publish a book because you think it's a good way to make money, this is the guide for you. If you want to actually write well and care about the work you're doing, stay away from this book.
February 25, 2016
This was pretty good and very thorough on how to get things done and what you need to know. It's not exactly in the most up-to-date fashion, but it helped me out a lot. It focused a lot on Non-fiction aspiring authors, but the information was pretty good for fictional aspiring authors too. ^_^
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews