Discussion
I published my first story in 1988, when I was 17 years old. Today, at 55, I've published more than 30 books, with three more coming in the next year or so. In the intervening years, I've spent a lot of time thinking and talking about publishing.
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My first novel editor was the magnificent Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who supported my publishing career from the very start, donating to help send me to the Clarion science fiction writers' workshop and inviting me to come read slush at Tor Books whenever I was in New York.
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Patrick didn't teach me *everything* I know about publishing, but he sure taught me a *lot* about publishing, and hardly a day goes by without my having cause to reflect on one of our many discussions over our decades-long professional and personal association.
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Out of all the things I learned about publishing from Patrick, one truth stands out above all: publishing is "the act of making something public." Publishing may or may not involve editing, layout, printing, binding, marketing or other activities that we associate with publishing houses, but publishing *always* involves identifying a work, identifying an audience, and finding ways to connect that work to that audience.
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I've had plenty of opportunity to reflect on publishing: I've been a bookseller and worked in libraries, I wrote a column for *Publishers Weekly*, self-published a few books of my own, published the first-ever book licensed under Creative Commons, and broke several Kickstarter records for audiobook projects. But most of all, I've worked with publishing professionals: publicists, marketing directors, operations people, copyeditors, and, above all, editors.
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