A Positive Attitude
It's going to be a great year — well, ok, the economy sucks and way too many people are unemployed, and the stock market is sickening, but let's be optimistic, the publishing industry is changing moment by moment, growing, expanding and being so innovative, what is there not to be happy about?
Am I jumping up and down for joy? Maybe not, because there is, as I mentioned a few downers. But on the whole I'm pretty optimistic about the future. There are so many more opportunities for writers now — although, I have to say, I feel bad for the agents out there who are trying to figure out where they stand among all this change. And the big, traditional publishing houses are really going to have to get on the ball this year. They're even worse than the European Union when it comes to adapting to what's happening today. The world has become faster (I love that commercial for 4G: that's so twenty-six seconds ago!). And large institutions have got to be able to change and adapt more quickly to keep up.
Will we see shorter contract terms as some people have predicted? It could only be a good thing. Will traditional publishers offer higher royalty rates to compete with what Amazon and other on-line retailers are offering. That would be nice, wouldn't it? Or should we just give up on the big six as quite a few authors have already done. I know I'm not going to be submitting any more books to them, and when I gave up on my last agent, I decided not to even try to get another. Now, I'm finding that that was a good decision. What do I need an agent for when I'm publishing my own books?
This year I'm going to finish the last book in my YA trilogy and publish it. I'm going to publish a book which I wrote for the love of it, but could never find a publisher to love as much as I did, and I'm going to look into making my books into audio books because I love them and would love to record my own books. My first four books, published with Kensington, are still under contract and won't be released for a few years to come, but maybe I can convince them to let me do something with those books since they're doing nothing. Yeah, I know, I shouldn't get my hopes up too much on that one — but it's such a waste!
I've got more book ideas to write and classes to teach (I'm so excited to teach self-publishing this semester, I really hope it goes well!). There is so many wonderful things to do this year and I plan on trying to do them all — because you never know, maybe the Mayans will be right.
Whatever you've got planned for this year, I hope all you want will come to you.
