At this location one writer describes his journey to publication. The home site is cracked.com, which is MA, and I think this article is PG/M.
How to Become an Author, in 5 Incredibly Difficult Steps
A while back, I wrote a non-fiction book about the apocalypse. Since publishing the book, the question I get asked the most has to be: “What are you doing in my toolshed?” Second place goes to “Is that my wife’s cocktail dress?” The third is- well, let’s skip ahead to questions not relating to a highly illegal fetish revolving around forbidden sheds and stolen evening wear. People usually ask me: “How did you get your book published?” Everybody wants to know how the process works, because they think that if they can just get the steps for this secret dance memorized, it’s all plaid jackets and [naughty bit removed] from that point forward. There are a lot of questions and answers for new authors out there on the Internet, but they always seem to skirt the subject in the name of preserving some sort of artistic mystique. As is the case with all nice things, I would like to ruin that tradition. I’ll talk to you about the publishing process honestly and unflinchingly, even when it makes the whole thing (and by extension, me) look kind of shitty.
Fair warning: This is not going to help you.
I didn’t actually initiate contact with a publisher of any kind. In fact, I didn’t even have a book to pitch when contact was first made. Somebody at the publishing house contacted me, out of the blue. And her email was caught by my spam filter.
Read the rest here.
#1 is extremely interesting, since – well firstly because of his legitimate point that an “advance” is almost certainly “all you’ll ever get” (which is why you NEVER sign a contract based on royalties only – any publisher that can’t afford an advance probably also can’t afford distribution, which means your book won’t get to shops, which means it won’t sell a single copy).
Secondly because the not-that-big figure he names as an advance is between three and ten times more than fiction writers get.
And here’s a consoling picture of a cat on a hot tin roof:
