You finish the last strokes on your masterpiece, a painting that stands twenty feet tall and thirty feet wide. It’s beautiful, fully capturing the essence of your idea of this city and the pitfalls of love, hate, and betrayal. You unveil it for your benefactor, eagerly awaiting the slaps on the back and joyous exclamations.
Before self-publishing exploded and transformed the book industry, most authors published their books by traditional means. You either got an agent who sold your book to a publisher, or you worked with a publisher directly. Once your book was in the publisher’s hands, they took care of the editing, which was mostly done behind closed doors. You didn’t have to worry about persnickety things like misplaced modifiers, Oxford commas, and bad breaks—and I don’t mean the dating kind.
