It is every writer’s dream to get a publishing contract with a big publishing house like Penguin or any big name publisher. However, a strong writing bio is vital for the achievement of this dream. By building publication credits, an author will already have his foot in the door when querying literary agents. Writers with several years’ worth of experience and who have published many shorter works usually get preferential treatment by agents.

Publication credits can be built by submitting poems, short stories, and essays to magazines and literary journals. Some people don’t believe in the importance of publishing many short works. However, it is very important to be published as many times as possible before approaching an agent. If an author has a great book that can stand well on its own, the author can also easily pitch his book to an agent. However, there are many benefits of building publishing credits.

One of the benefits of publishing credits is that they show an agent that an author can handle submission guidelines and meet deadlines. This basically means that an agent can determine if the author is serious about what he does. It also proves that an author is established in smaller markets and lays the author’s groundwork to enter the market for longer books.

By publishing shorter works, publishers send a message to literary agents that they have faith in the ability of the author to write material that will be enjoyed by readers. Agents automatically become interested in an author’s work if the author has already been published many times by recognized publishing houses.

An author that has credentials in smaller markets has a competitive edge over authors that have few credits. Agents know that getting publishing credits is not easy hence they treat them with the importance they deserve and prioritize people who have them. People with more publishing credits are therefore more likely to convince agents to represent them.

Apart from making an author more readily accepted by agents, publishing credits also build the author’s sense of accomplishment. When an author gets acceptance letters from literary publishers, the author will definitely be more motivated than authors who don’t get much attention from publishers. Literary credits from writing short works are also easy to accumulate which motivates authors.

By getting published by magazines, an author can directly benefit from the services of agents. For instance, literary agents get some of their best clients after reading their articles published in magazines. Publishing short works does to an author what hanging out at the best night clubs does to a model – it gives them much needed exposure to people they never knew were watching.

Although writing short works is the quickest way to build publishing credits, it requires a bit of tact. Authors should avoid making collections of short stories and essays without publishing part of the works for people to get a ‘taste’ of what the collection has in store for them. Literary agents also want to experience an author’s work before considering becoming the author’s representative. Agents general shy away from entire collections which have never been previewed.