A Few Words on Self-Publishing

this has been something that folks have broached with me a handful of times here recently, because i've been pretty vocal about the fact that i have (finally, praise little sweet baby jesus) finished the edits and revisions for my manuscript. a couple people seem to think that i'm willing to contact amazon digital publishing or one of the other ePub companies at this point, and while i don't want to appear dismissive...

i don't.

like, not even a smidge.

i have no interest in pursuing that, and while i have a whole litany of reasons why, i thought i'd address the major hitters here. before i do this, though, i must repeat: these are my opinions. if you don't agree, that's fine. move along, then.

first and foremost: i believe in the traditional route to publishing. for those of you who may not actually know what this entails - because really, why would you, unless you are involved in said industry? - here's a quick and dirty version:

• have completed/edited manuscript in your possession
• query (this is the process of contacting literary agents for representation)
• sign with agent; work on manuscript more
• agent acts as liaison for you with publishers
• secure publishing deal

there's a ton of in-between work that happens within and after these five points, but all things considered, this is the basic gist.

i believe in this route to publishing for a million reasons, but one of the top ones is the sheer quality of work that tends to come out of this method. yes, you'll have some clunkers. but if you compare/contrast the quality between a traditionally published work and a large portion of self-published novels, you will see a distinct difference in quality, both with regard to writing, but also to marketing, and editing.

CAVEAT: of course there are some self-published/ePublished works that are of impeccable quality (an excellent example of this is Hugh Howey's WOOL series, which was originally published via amazon). unfortunately, this is not the norm.

second, an author is far less likely to receive a truly lucrative deal via self-publishing than traditional. there are a long list of reasons why this is the case, but primarily, this is because all of the big publishers - think harper, simon & schuster, penguin, scholastic - will not read your work unless an agent is involved. why? plain and simply: quality. so, you see, this is a rather circular discussion, eh?

third, generally speaking, self-publishing and then trying to attain the representation of an agent is rather difficult, for reasons that have to do with royalties/intellectual property/contract law/etc etc. translation: red tape ahoy. no, thank you.

now, if you asked me if i would CONSIDER self-publishing at any point, i would tell you that the answer is yes. but that would not really be an option for me unless i felt that i had exhausted all other resources, and to be frank, at this point, i am confident in my ability to attain the representation of an agent, which is a good chunk of the battle.

anyway, i just wanted to talk briefly (or, not so briefly, as it were) about this, because i do have strong feelings on the topic, and this is, after all, my little corner of the internet. ;)

happy sunday, all.

update: querying process

so, i wrote a book.

and when i finished it, i was all, "yesssssss, i wrote a book, oh-em-gee, amazing!" right? i was (am) so proud, and it's 74000 words of YA fantasy, which is (to be honest) a genre that i never thought i would write. i love my protagonists, i love where the story is going, and i love that the story arc itself challenges and excites me.

i sent it to some people for feedback, and then made a quick pass of edits to get it cleaned up a bit. then, a few weeks ago, i send the quick-edited draft to a friend who is an editor by trade for a comprehensive check of grammar and the writing in general.

all of this editing?

it's to prep the manuscript as best as i can for the querying process.

in the event that anyone reading this doesn't know what that is: querying is the process of sending a summary of your work to various agents in an attempt to find representation for yourself, as an author. this representation could be for a single work, but really, most agents want to represent an author's entire body of works - including current and future projects.

so, here's the tricky bit:

your query letter summary should be... oh, 200 words. maybe 300, if you're pushing it. because the whole thing should be no more than 500 words.

this is difficult at best. i'm sure you can imagine why, but let me just list a few reasons:

• as an author, you probably want to include more than is necessary
• you never really know what will catch peoples' interest
• every. single. word. better be perfect. 

and and and!

it's not abnormal to get rejection after rejection before you find that one agent that will represent your work and believes in you and your skill. as an example, a dear friend of mine is going to be published next may, and if you ask me, her manuscript is gorgeously and crisply written, is really quite original, and includes a really strong storyline, and she was rejected 60 times before she received an offer for representation.

so, you know... super fun.

but there's a huge reason that i'm willing to put myself through this, and it's huge:

most major publishing houses will only considered agented manuscripts.

there's a million reasons for this, but i'm almost positive that most of them have to do with the inherent quality of an agented manuscript versus those that are not.

so, where am i in this process?

my query summary is drafted. i'm taking a few days away from it to come back and review it, and then i'll be putting the rest of the letter together for emailing. i have a list of about fifteen agents that i'll be querying initially, and i'll be looking up at least fifteen more. the plan, right now, is to send out 10 at a time, once a week.

basically:

this will be (and is, even preemptively) me:

via

because i'll be a hot mess, its likely that i will want an exorbitant amount of this: 

 

via 

meanwhile, all the agents will be like this: 

 

via

i'm only sort of kidding.

side note: ryan gosling, you are a sexy beast. 

anyway, back on topic:

querying. yes, the very thought makes me nauseous, but this is a step toward my dream of having a proper writing career, and so it simply is what it is. the fact that my entire career is based on this very brief letter only increases my desire that this letter be spot-on-freaking-perfect.

is there something you want to do in your life that makes you as anxious as this makes me?