I received the following questions from Tiara:
I have not actually written a book, but I have a wonderful idea in mind for a book. I love the Lord and Christian Fiction is definitely the way I would like to go. What must I do to get published. An associate of mine, recently sent her book to several different publishing companies. My only problem with that is, how do I know that a publishing company won’t steal my book and publish it as their own.

This question is somewhat open-ended. I’m not sure what types of companies where your friends are sending their work? I can only speak from my own experience. If you want to publish traditionally (meaning, submit your work to the large NY-type publishers) you’ll more than likely need a literary agent. Most traditional publishers won’t look at your work without having an agent. As far as length and content, you should be able to research the various Christian publishers online – go to their websites and look at their submission guidelines. This way, you’ll know about how long to make your stories via wordcount that’s given in the guidelines.

If you’re self-publishing (meaning you’re PAYING to have your work published) then I can’t advise about that because I’ve never done that before.

Your best bet would be to join ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers). It’s a wonderful group with a wonderful writers’ loop. You can ask questions of other writers and you’ll be around like-minded individuals (both published and unpublished). ACFW is only good if you’re going the traditional route in publishing. Also, if going the traditional route, you’d need to decide whom would be the best publisher for your work. Who do you like to read? Which publisher out there, now, publishes the type of fiction that you’re writing? That’ll help you determine where your book will fit.

If you want to self-publish, then, I’m not sure which organization would work best on that front? If you do want to self-publish, I’d advise by starting out by doing an e-book first, because, from what I can gather from other authors, the e-book route doesn’t require a whole lot of money.

As far as stealing your work, that’s not something you should worry about. Your work is automatically copyrighted when you create it on your computer. If you should decide to self-publish and hire a company to print your books for you, then you’d need to register the copyright with the Library of Congress (I think. Again, this is not something that I normally do on my own.)

Also, you said you had a book idea but have not written it yet? You need to write the book! You should be working on this regularly. The above-mentioned advice is all moot unless you have your book written! So, start writing your book everyday and see how it goes from there. Hope you find my advice helpful!

Sincerely,
~Cecelia Dowdy~