You’ve Finished Your Novel—Now What? Everything You Need to Know to Get Published

Understand When Your Novel Is Ready—and What to Do Next

You've typed "the end." But is it really done? And once it is, how do you actually get it published?

What You'll Learn

• How to assess whether your manuscript is truly done using revision and causality checklists drawn from George Saunders's craft framework
• The Kornfeld Principle: why every scene must both entertain the reader and advance the plot in a non-trivial way—and how to check your own manuscript against it
• Techniques for testing your pacing with the post-it method and what to do when a reader can put your book down
• How to write a 25-word log line that conveys setting, protagonist, story, antagonist, ticking clock, and stakes—with a real before-and-after example
• Strategies for finding literary agents who represent your genre, from writing conferences and acknowledgment pages to Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents
• What the publisher submission process looks like once you have an agent—timelines, the author package, editorial feedback, and what "on submission" means
• How to evaluate self-publishing and traditional publishing against your own goals, genre, and marketing strengths—including an honest look at the odds

Through this comprehensive approach, you'll move from the relief of typing those final words to a clear-eyed assessment of what your manuscript still needs—and what it means when it's genuinely ready to submit. We'll draw on George Saunders's insight that the writers who get published share two traits: a willingness to revise and the ability to create causality. I'll explain why revision isn't proofreading but re-envisioning, and introduce the Kornfeld Principle—the idea that every structural unit in your story must both entertain the reader and advance the plot in a non-trivial way. You'll hear practical guidance on how agents think about manuscripts, how the query and submission process works from the inside, and what Jane Friedman's publishing grid reveals about the full range of paths from writing to publication.

Perfect for:

• Writers who have completed a draft and want to know whether it's ready for submission
• Authors weighing traditional publishing against self-publishing and looking for an honest, experience-based comparison
• Writers preparing to query agents for the first time and looking for a practical, step-by-step framework
• Anyone who wants a clear-eyed look at how books actually get published — beyond the myths and guesswork

This workshop equips you with a practical framework for some of the most consequential decisions in a writing career: knowing when to stop revising and start submitting, choosing the publishing path that fits your goals and genre, and presenting your work to agents in a way that gets results. We'll discuss a log line technique that applies to fiction and nonfiction alike, explore a causality checklist that works across genres, and the agent research strategies I used to land my first agent.

Whether you've just typed your last sentence or have been sitting on a finished manuscript for months, this session gives you the structure and confidence to take your next step. We cover both the craft side of being done—revision, causality, prose—and the business side: writing queries, understanding submission timelines, and knowing your range of publishing options before you commit to a path.

Getting published requires more than finishing a book. It requires knowing your manuscript is ready, understanding your options, and presenting your work in a way that connects with the right agents and publishers. Rent the replay to get my full guidance on each of these steps—including a live Q&A where I answer questions on querying series versus standalone novels, the submission timeline, working with agents over the course of a career, and what publishers look for in an author's bio and platform.

Rent the replay today and take the next step toward publication.