How to Publish a Book With the Big 5: 6 Experts Weigh in

Daunted by the publishing world and how to navigate it? You’ve come to the right blog post. 

To unravel insider secrets on how to be published with the Big Five, PEN America hosted a panel discussion where award-winning author Susan Shapiro spoke with six industry experts. Audience members heard helpful tidbits from Johanna V. Castillo, a literary agent at Writers House, Eamon Dolan, an author and editor at Simon & Schuster, Deborah Garrison, a poet and editor at Penguin Random House, Clarence A. Haynes, an author and freelance editor, Emi Ikkanda, an author and editor at Penguin Random House, and Kevin Nguyen, an author and editor at The Verge.

If you couldn’t make the event, hosted at the family-owned independent bookstore P&T Knitwear, here are five takeaways:

Consider starting small. 

To kick off the conversation, Shapiro shared one of the lines she frequently tells her students looking to publish books in any genre: “Three pages can change your life.” “Say somebody has an idea, even for a book, I always think it’s a million times easier to write a great three pages and publish that than 300,” she said. 

Back when Garrison worked at The New Yorker, the pieces she pulled from the slush pile — written by authors whom “nobody had ever heard of” — would become projects that would be nominated for prizes like National Book Award, she said. 

To read the full article on pen.org, click here