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I am an author who is beyond eager to get my first book deal. I have a blog and website, www.embodypeace.com, which features excerpts from my first book, The Acceptance Diet which is as yet unpublished. It offers a more enlightened way to weight loss, and is going to help countless people end the struggle with food and dieting. I know it. It just needs to be published.

Enter Danielle, who gave me the following twenty points when I interviewed her about the process and details of getting published. I am much wiser and more prepared to find myself on Amazon. I’ll keep you posted.

1. Get your own website and blog. Then blog. Guest blog.
2. Search Engine Optimization is essential. You need structure for your art. SEO is necessary structure. Spend 80% of your time and efforts on your art, 20% on packaging and distribution of you art keeping in mind that it’s the 20% that makes all the difference.
3. Write daily. Publish every week. Write for free.
4. Submit articles to every magazine possible.
5. Publish your own E-book.
6. Speak. Speak for free.
7. Find a literary agent so that you can be a writer. An agent shops your book to publishers. You need one. They have the relationships with the editors.
8. Find one the old fashioned way by searching within the acknowledgment section of books where you’ll find authors thanking their agents. Make sure to search books that you like and resonate with.
9. Get an agent’s attention by being willing to send an unconventional query, especially if it fits with the message of your book.
10. Pay attention to packaging when sending your query.
11. A good agent will help you craft a winning proposal that will then go to the publishers.
12. Your book will go to auction. A number of publishers will come to table with a potential deal for you.
13. A publisher spends 80% of their marketing budget on 20% of their authors.
14. Be willing to hire a publicist with your own money (if you’re not one of the 20%).
15. Most authors never get more than their advance. You have to earn out your advance, then you get royalties.
16. Occasionally a few publishers offer a much higher royalty, but with no advance. You need to be in the position, and most authors aren’t, to be without an income while writing.
17. Expect on average 1.00 a book in royalties. True Story: Danielle reports that they earn less than 2.00 per their book, Style Statement, in royalties.
18. Once you sign, you hand over the content and they design at their will. Many authors don’t even know what their book cover design is going to look like until it is final.
19. Getting published really boils down to amazing content.
20. If the quality is there you don’t need to be famous before you write your book.