Writing the book is the easy part.
I know that sounds wrong. Most people spend years on their manuscript, refining it, rewriting it, pouring everything they have into it. And by the time it’s done they feel like the hard part is behind them.
It isn’t. It’s barely begun.
The publishing world has a dirty secret it doesn’t advertise. The majority of books, good books, important books, books with genuine ideas worth reading, disappear without trace. Not because the writing wasn’t good enough. Because the author had no idea how the industry actually worked and nobody around them did either.
The traditional publishing myth
There’s a version of the author journey that still gets sold as the gold standard. Write the book, find an agent, get picked up by a major publisher, watch it land on shelves around the world.
For a tiny fraction of writers, that’s real. For the vast majority, it’s a waiting game that goes nowhere, years spent chasing gatekeepers who are making decisions based on market trends, existing platforms, and commercial viability rather than the quality of what’s on the page.
Traditional publishing isn’t a meritocracy. It never has been. Publishers aren’t in the business of discovering great writers. They’re in the business of reducing risk. That means they back authors who already have audiences, already have platforms, already have the visibility that makes a book launch commercially predictable.
If you don’t have that before you knock on their door, the door doesn’t open. Not because your book isn’t good enough. Because you haven’t done the work that would make publishing you a safe bet.
Most authors never understand this. They spend years chasing approval from a system that was never designed to give it to them.
The vanity publishing trap
So they look for another way in. And that’s where the real damage happens.
The vanity publishing industry is built entirely on the gap between an author’s desperation to be published and their lack of understanding about what publishing actually requires. The promises are always the same, global distribution, major retailers, professional production, the credibility of a published author without the waiting and rejection of the traditional route.
What most of them deliver is a printed book, a handful of copies, and an invoice.
The distribution is technically real but practically invisible. The retailer listings exist but nobody is driving anyone to them. The marketing support amounts to a template social media post and a press release sent to nobody who matters.
And the author, who invested thousands and months of their life, is left holding a box of books and wondering why nothing is moving.
The book didn’t fail. The strategy failed. Or more accurately, there was no strategy. There was a transaction dressed up as a publishing deal.
I’ve seen this play out too many times to count. Talented people with genuinely important things to say, convinced they’ve found their path to credibility, only to realise months later that the company they trusted had no real interest in their success, only their cheque.
The fake award industry nobody talks about
This is where it gets worse.
Once you’re a published author, regardless of how you got there, you become a target for a different kind of exploitation. The emails start arriving. Congratulations, you’ve been nominated for a prestigious literary award. Your work has been recognised. This is your opportunity to be celebrated on an international stage.
It sounds legitimate. It’s designed to. But most of these so-called awards are not backed by any recognised literary body, any credible industry organisation, or any panel of judges whose names you’d actually know. They’re manufactured credibility, pay the entry fee, pay for the trophy, pay for the gala dinner ticket, and you can call yourself an award-winning author.
I’ve received these. I’ve watched countless authors receive them and light up with excitement, not realising that the “award” they’re about to invest in means nothing to the industry, nothing to readers, and nothing to anyone who actually knows how publishing works.
Real literary recognition comes from organisations with history, transparency, and genuine industry standing. If you can’t find who’s behind the award, who’s judging it, and what previous winners have gone on to achieve, you already have your answer.
The publishing world is full of people who have figured out how to monetise the ambition of authors who don’t yet know what legitimate looks like. And until someone tells you, it’s almost impossible to spot.
What nobody tells you about what a book actually needs
A book without positioning is just a document.
The question that determines whether a book succeeds isn’t “is it good?” It’s who is it for, why do they need it now, and how are they going to hear about it? Those three questions need answers before the book is written, not after it’s printed.
The authors who break through, regardless of how they published, treat the book as one part of a larger platform strategy. The book is the credibility vehicle. But the platform, the audience, the visibility, that has to exist around it.
Nobody is going to find your book because it exists. They’re going to find it because you put it in front of them, or because someone they trust did. That requires marketing, positioning, and an understanding of how to build reach, none of which have anything to do with how well you write.
The gap that keeps most authors stuck
The writers I’ve worked with who have become bestselling authors didn’t have better books than the ones still sitting unpublished on someone’s hard drive.
They understood that the book was a business, not just a creative act. They invested in understanding their audience before they finished the manuscript. They built visibility before the launch, not after. They positioned the book within a larger body of work, a speaking platform, a media presence, a community, so that when it arrived, there were already people waiting for it.
That’s not luck. That’s strategy. And it’s entirely learnable.
But it requires letting go of the idea that great writing is enough. In a world where millions of books are published every year, great writing is the minimum requirement.
What separates the authors who matter from the ones who disappear is everything that surrounds the book, and almost none of it happens on the page.
The industry isn’t going to come find you. The vanity publishers will take your money and disappear. The fake award organisations will manufacture just enough credibility to keep you satisfied while building nothing real.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that noise, your actual book, the one that could genuinely move people , is waiting for someone to treat it with the strategy it deserves.
Most authors never figure that out in time.
The ones who do think very differently about what publishing actually requires.
