9d • General discussion
Advice from a Penguin editor: You don’t need a platform. You need…
I want to know your thoughts about this. I know, it's Sunday, but Netflix doesn't make anyone rich, information does. Right?
I watched an interview the other day with Alyssa Matesic, a developmental editor who spent years inside Penguin Random House and now runs a YouTube channel followed by over 150,000 writers. She said one thing that I think every person in this community needs to hear.
You do not need to be famous to get published.
Wow, I said it.
So many writers give up before they even start, convinced that without a platform, a following, a personal brand, no agent will ever look at them. Alyssa has watched the opposite happen, again and again. Authors with nothing but a strong story and real craft, getting deals.
A following opens doors, yes. But it has never been the thing that gets a book bought. The book gets the book bought.
Her advice for standing out was blunt, and I loved it.
- Write the best freaking book you can.
- Give the agent no reason to say no.
- Make the pages impossible to put down from the very first one, because an agent is sitting at a desk with hundreds of queries, and the old excuse of "my story really picks up around page fifty" is a death sentence.
They will never reach page fifty.
Well, I know, nothing new under the sun. Almost boring.
A few other things worth knowing, since this world is kept unnecessarily mysterious.
- On money.
A traditional advance is not a gift. It is an advance against your future royalties. If they pay you fifty thousand, your book has to earn that back in royalties before you see another cent. And the advance arrives in installments, often spread across one or two years.
The upside is that a book that keeps selling can pay you for years. And we all hope for.
- On editors.
Take your manuscript as far as you possibly can on your own first. Do several passes. Let it sit. The story keeps teaching you things after you have written it, and some of the best fixes arrive in your sleep. You bring in an editor when you hit the wall where you can feel something is wrong, but cannot name it. That is the moment the investment pays off.
Here is what stayed with me most.
She said the people inside publishing are not gatekeepers guarding a fortress. They are book lovers. Shy, introverted book nerds who care about preserving storytelling. The wall we imagine is mostly built from our own fear.
But let me add a few honest footnotes.
She is right about the mechanics. The advance and royalties model, the installments spread over years, the advice to take your manuscript as far as you can before hiring an editor. All accurate.
On "you don't need a platform," keep one thing in mind.
She sells editorial services to writers, so she has every reason to say focus on the book, not the following. And for us, for literary fiction, she is right. The book matters more than the platform. But for non-fiction, a platform is often decisive, and many agents still look at it regardless.
On agents being "just shy book nerds, not gatekeepers," that is partly true and partly comforting. They are kind people. The wall is also real. She compares it herself to getting into an elite college. The slots are tiny. Both things are true at once.
None of this is a lie. It is just the warm version, told by someone who makes a living selling hope and help to authors. The technical core is solid. The tone is sunnier than the odds.
Trust the craft. But go in with clear eyes. 👇
What are your thoughts?
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Advice from a Penguin editor: You don’t need a platform. You need…
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