We Are Limited by The Stories We Tell Ourselves

If your book is well written, you will find a home for it. You are going to live inside a story of achievement.

How to get published starts with telling yourself that you can get published.

A friend sent me an article “The Real Reason People Won’t Change” from the Harvard Review. My first instinct was to not want to read anything from the Harvard Review. Since Harvard is primarily attended by rich students, I would assume the Harvard Review is giving advice to that same group. I believe that when one’s worldview comes from wealth, one might have difficulty understanding what it’s like to live their entire life without enough money to get through the next month.

I never expected to be a successful writer. I didn’t go to a writing-focused school. I didn’t study prose with any renowned writing teachers. I read. Books were my teacher, so when I started my memoir, Sailing the Milky Way, many years ago, I never imagined it finding a home like Zando. We will see what it does in the world, but my dreams for it were small. Now, they are large. Now, I have world-class dreams.

Early on, an editor at another publishing press asked to publish it and print 500 copies. It was a small publisher with no wide-scale distribution. I thought about it. It was a very early version, not nearly as whip-tight as it is now. In all likelihood, the book would have disappeared. Often, writers hurry books to market before they are ready. They are offered an opportunity they know they shouldn’t take, but they think, This is my last chance.

Then there’s Red Hen Press. We started as a micro press. We were publishing three to five books a year, but we kept growing. Because I was the face of the press, and we were on the West Coast—focused on publishing women, writers of the West, and writers of color—we didn’t expect national attention, or awards, or reviews. We were on the other side of the Hudson in a city that often ignores the creative work of women.

I never watched the National Book Critics Circle or the National Book Awards; I always assumed West Coast presses would get short shrift. But as editor, I recognized the need to change our story. We started publishing the best authors we could find. Aimee Liu, Mas Masumoto, Percival Everett, Kristen Millares Young. We sought authors who believed in our ability to work with them to create magic.

There are a lot of good publishing companies in the world, but if you aren’t a good fit with their team or you aren’t a good fit with your literary agent, you should move on. At Red Hen, I want everyone we are publishing to feel like it’s working. It only works when we have an author/press partnership. Neither side can do it by themselves.

Until the last few years, some of our bigger authors cut ties after they made names for themselves. I understand that writers move around, sometimes going to a bigger press because they want to try a company they think can do more for them. Some of our authors are interested in jumping to presses like Graywolf. “Then go,” I want to say. “If they will take you.” Alternatively, we have also taken authors who left Graywolf and Copper Canyon, Penguin and Harper Collins, in search of a different publishing experience.

In the end, though, the question is: how do you become a published author?

We all can get published if we do the following:

1. Write a good book.

2. Have beta readers read and edit your earliest drafts.

3. Have a professional editor read and edit your best draft.

4. Send your manuscript out to the right places. Many literary agents list their primary genres and topics of interest on Manuscript Wish List.

5. Get published in literary journals and create a website with your publication history and literary achievements.

6. Attend literary conferences and events where you can meet with agents and editors.

7. Stay consistent until you’ve found a home for your work.

But the work doesn’t stop once you are published. When your book is accepted with a publisher, its success depends on your partnership. You will need to work with the publisher to create a robust marketing and media campaign. You will be doing podcasts. You will be doing events, book trailers, and TikTok. You are the story.

At Red Hen, we are meeting with our authors in January and getting them going on podcasts, book trailers, websites, and social media. It takes everything, but it also takes writing a new story about yourself in your head. Florencia Ramirez’s story is that her upcoming book, The Kitchen Activist, will become a New York Times Bestseller. To achieve this, she is pushing on social media, podcasting, and attending a media lunch in New York. We look forward to watching her book soar.

The statistics are that traditional publishing houses churn out about 500,000 books a year. More writers of color are getting published now, and that’s terrific and as it should be. More writers with disabilities are getting published, and that is as it should be. It used to be that 95% of books were by white people. For so long, we’ve needed more stories from people from diverse backgrounds that represent the world we live in. We understand the world better by living in these robust stories.

Red Hen publishes books of the West, books by women, books by writers of color, and books by writers with disabilities, but most importantly, we look for great writing. We are publishing Luke Goebel’s Los Angeles-based novel, Kill Dick, in the fall of 2025. If your book is well written, you will find a home for it. If you are telling yourself the story that you can’t find a publisher or agent—or that even if you get published, you won’t win prizes or get reviews—because you are fill in the blank, then you are going to live that story.

You got this. You are going to live inside a story of achievement—one with you as a published author.

I’ll be doing quarterly chats and will be ready to give you advice!