Agents, pt. 2

Yesterday, I described to you my tortuous path leading up to me deciding to get published by finding an agent. However there was one fact that I slipped in that you may not have noticed. Please note the year I started on this adventure: 2008. Remember that year? The stock market had crashed and everybody went into panic mode and truly our economy has ever recovered. Almost all of the agents started hanging up shingles signaling that they were no longer accepting new authors because publishers were only buying sure things which meant previously published authors.

I tried hiring a professional editor and paid her money to critique my books but the things she said were so harsh, I threw in the towel and realized my dream was never going to happen. I stopped sending in query letters and spent a long time rethinking my strategy. I knew about the Kindle and the more I read about it, the more I realized that I could self-publish and who needs an agent?

So I did. I compiled all three VIRUS 5 novels down into one super-long novel entitled Rome's Revolution and in November, 2011, the book went on sale on Amazon. I also learned how to self-publish for the B&N Nook, Kobo, iTunes and Smashwords. I sold 77 copies of Rome's Revolution within the first month. To date I have sold nearly 400 copies. All told, if you want to count the books I sell for free, the total is nearly 3600. I have actually received money for nearly 900 books. Not a lot but more than zero.

Even though the economy still sucks and agents and publication houses are still resisting taking on unknown writers, an entirely new market has appeared. HBO, Showtime, AMC, Amazon and Netflix among others are now producing original content which is fantastic. More channels are opening up every month, all of them hungry for quality programming. My books would make a phenomenal five year series. The first three would be Rome's Revolution, year four would be The Ark Lords and year five would be Rome's Evolution.

I wrote an email to a consolidator who sends content to Netflix for consideration and they told me nobody can get their foot in the door without an agent. So I am going to rewrite the first third of Rome's Revolution entirely and heavily edit the rest. And then guess what? I am going to hop aboard the agent-go-round again. Who knows? Maybe this time I will succeed. Probably not. But I have to try.