In a round-about way, knowing somebody might have helped with getting pubbed print, but not through anything I did. I was friends with a couple of people who knew an editor at Berkley. They mentioned me to her. She checked me out and then contacted me. But I never in my wildest dreams expected or considered something like that happening.

And I didn’t ‘use’ those connections. They just mentioned me.

One thing that WILL help is being professional. Because both of these friends that passed my name on wouldn’t have done it if I was unprofessional. It’s that image thing again.
The conclusion I’ve come to is that getting pubbed has do with luck, timing, and hard work.

I lucked into getting my book in front of a person who loved it @ EC.

I got into EC right when erotic romance was taking off and that definitely played into things.

Over the next couple of years, I had a book out with my epubs every 4-8 weeks, busting my tail to build a ‘name’.

I tried to maintain a somewhat professional image.

All of that was what led the two friends of mine to passing my name onto that editor.

You can know all the people in the world, but if you don’t work hard, if you don’t carry yourself online somewhat professionally, and if the book you have doesn’t appeal to an editor, it doesn’t matter who you know or don’t know.

I’d like to personally squash this perpetual idiocy. I sold my first two books without knowing or having met anyone in the publishing industry. I was a housewife with a subscription to Writer’s Digest. That was it.

I did make the networking rounds the first few years after my first novel was published, but I never landed a single job. That includes belonging to three writer organizations and going to about twenty cons, and talking to or pitching about a hundred editors.

All of the editors and clients who have approached me with job offers (regular and WFH) know me solely from my published work, my old web site and/or the weblogs. That includes jobs I took writing for Eric Flint from Baen, a novel series for Guideposts, and a blog post that ended up in a how-to antho for Philip Martin/Scarletta Press.