Several times this week, someone has told me what they write, how long they’ve been writing, and how much they love writing. They’ve finished a first draft, edited it once or twice, then deemed it ready for publication. They ask me where they can send their writing, as if that were just an afterthought, and that I kept a list of markets who always take work exactly like they write.

It’s like just being able to write complete sentences makes you a professional writer.

To be marketable, you have to define who you write for, and you need to stand heads and shoulders above others. That doesn’t mean just to readers. You also have to cater to who will print your work. Where are they? Who are the good ones? Who are the approachable ones? How do you pitch to them?

There is a symbiotic relationship required with taking writing seriously. You have to please yourself, hit a sweet spot with readers, and impress a publisher. Let’s say you skip the publisher aspect and self-publish. That’s fine if you’ve done tons of homework on the success of traditional authors. You read tons of books. You study websites. You study publishers and what they deem marketable. Because you want everyone not to be able to tell the difference between indie publishing and traditional.

But if you choose self-publishing, do you want the reader to know you self-published? No. You only want to be noted for writing well and putting a book in reach of the reader. That means you have to match what traditional does, what it looks like, how it sells books.

You think nobody will notice, but they will. Don’t cut corners. Pour yourself into your product as if you had that three-legged stool to be accountable to: a publisher, a reader, and yourself. Don’t make excuses about why you can never be as good as someone else. You are already shortchanging yourself, and readers can tell.