I am but one of 20,000.
And that’s being conservative. I have heard literary agents receive thirty to fifty query letters per day while some publishers receive up to one hundred query letters a day. (Wondering what a query letter is? More to come on that front in future posts.)
These numbers represent my competition in a year. The odds are frankly not in my favor as an “unpublished” author. Yes, there is more respect for self-publishing today than there used to be—and I have read that publishers are scouting self-published work—but they will still consider me “unpublished” because I do not have a name publisher. I’m just one peon in the slush pile no matter how good my book is.
Is it hopeless? No. Do I have great odds? No.
Another sad note is that when pursuing a literary agent or publisher from scratch, it can take years to strike gold. You send out letters; wait to hear back. Send out letters; wait to hear back. They request a chapter; you wait. Rejected again. Some of them steam the stamps off your SASE and reuse them. Finally, someone picks it up! Oh, I’m on the docket another year down the road? How many years am I willing to wait to see print? I suppose that trenchant social commentary about Michael Jackson’s death isn’t so relevant any more.
So, what is my overall strategy?
I will pursue literary agents and publishers (both large and small) while simultaneously moving down the self-publishing path. That way, whenever I am ready to give up on finding an agent or publisher (that is, when I’m sick of looking and too frustrated to continue), I will be prepared to immediately pull the trigger and publish the book myself, using the same publishing company I established for Death by Zamboni (Bedhead Books).
Because I will be designing my book meticulously and planning the self-publishing process out thoroughly, it will likely take me about that long to start shipping books anyway. If I waited to start the self-publishing process until after I gave up on the publishers then it would likely take me an additional year before the book saw print, which defeats the purpose. Another benefit of starting the self-publishing process is that if I do land a publisher, I will be able to hand off the book designed exactly as I want it to be. So my vision will be developed more precisely, and it will also be ready for printing sooner.
That’s the high-level approach I’m going to take.
Next up: the pros & cons of self-publishing versus landing a publisher. (And there are quite a few.)
These numbers represent my competition in a year. The odds are frankly not in my favor as an “unpublished” author. Yes, there is more respect for self-publishing today than there used to be—and I have read that publishers are scouting self-published work—but they will still consider me “unpublished” because I do not have a name publisher. I’m just one peon in the slush pile no matter how good my book is.
Is it hopeless? No. Do I have great odds? No.
Another sad note is that when pursuing a literary agent or publisher from scratch, it can take years to strike gold. You send out letters; wait to hear back. Send out letters; wait to hear back. They request a chapter; you wait. Rejected again. Some of them steam the stamps off your SASE and reuse them. Finally, someone picks it up! Oh, I’m on the docket another year down the road? How many years am I willing to wait to see print? I suppose that trenchant social commentary about Michael Jackson’s death isn’t so relevant any more.
So, what is my overall strategy?
I will pursue literary agents and publishers (both large and small) while simultaneously moving down the self-publishing path. That way, whenever I am ready to give up on finding an agent or publisher (that is, when I’m sick of looking and too frustrated to continue), I will be prepared to immediately pull the trigger and publish the book myself, using the same publishing company I established for Death by Zamboni (Bedhead Books).
Because I will be designing my book meticulously and planning the self-publishing process out thoroughly, it will likely take me about that long to start shipping books anyway. If I waited to start the self-publishing process until after I gave up on the publishers then it would likely take me an additional year before the book saw print, which defeats the purpose. Another benefit of starting the self-publishing process is that if I do land a publisher, I will be able to hand off the book designed exactly as I want it to be. So my vision will be developed more precisely, and it will also be ready for printing sooner.
That’s the high-level approach I’m going to take.
Next up: the pros & cons of self-publishing versus landing a publisher. (And there are quite a few.)
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If I might now put on my writer's hat. Like you, I've written some books. Four in fact. Some time ago my brother bugged me to apply for an Australia Council grant - as a musician/composer he'd received one at his first go. Lucky, I thought.
Still, I got the application form,and to my great astonishment discovered that I hadn't written any books at all. My regular publisher which had published over one hundred titles did not exist. I did not exist. My books did not exist.
Never mind that one of my books sold out the print run of 1200 in a few months. Or that another one of them was named by a prominent reviewer as one of her favourite books of the year. Or that my stuff's been translated into various languages. Never mind that people actually read what I wrote. Or that I regularly received letters saying I'd changed somebody's outlook, or their life, even.
Evidently if I'd had something published in an approved literary magazine purchased only by the mothers of the authors, that would count. But my writing didn't.
Every time I think about this I feel ill. So, I'm with you on this too. Yuck!!!!
Yep, NGE...small publishing is as much of a hard nut to crack as a main stream press. The odds are still not great because although small publishers receive fewer submission than big publishers get, they also publish far fewer books. And they are picky about the style or genre.I had some moderate interest from a small press for my first novel, Death by Zamboni, but they said they only published 3 books per year and they already had their next 6 books lined! So i could wait 2 years to possibly be on their rotation. It wasn't worth it.
And, yes, in many circles, self-publishing and small indie presses don't count. But i think the tide is turning, in particular because the large presses are having a really hard time being profitable. Authors are taking things into their own hands. The issue, of course, is finding the quality self-published books, because any yahoo can now publish something POD (print-on-demand). In my opinion, an author who self-publishes (and i will distinguish in future posts between POD and self-publishing) has to work a lot harder than a published author to ensure the quality of the material.
David David wrote: "And, yes, in many circles, self-publishing and small indie presses don't count. But i think the tide is turning, in particular because the large presses are having a really hard time being profitable. Authors are taking things into their own hands. The issue, of course, is finding the quality self-published books, because any yahoo can now publish something POD (print-on-demand). In my opinion, an author who self-publishes (and i will distinguish in future posts between POD and self-publishing) has to work a lot harder than a published author to ensure the quality of the material."I think the bottom line is that the tide turning is due to the fact that the presence of the internet lets the consumer choose in a way he could not previously. At least we would have known for sure, as we pulped our books, that they didn't have an audience. The internet really does let things find their market if there is one.
I might add that my experience is that you can do much better self-publishing than going with a major publisher. I thought to begin with that this might because my books were for a closed audience, I knew my market, I thought I knew how to sell them. Years before my first book was published I sent a ms. to Victor Gollancz who quickly wrote back to accept it for publication. I was SO excited...and then crestfallen to say the least. Having organised to meet them in London in 1988 to sign a contract at a celebratory lunch at that lunch they announced they'd changed their minds.
But I realised in retrospect this was not necessarily a bad thing. Although I haven't gotten around to doing anything yet with that particular ms. - I figure it'll go on the web sometime - the fact is later on when I did publish via my family's publishing firm a book, I managed to sell out in a few months, what Victor Gollancz would have taken years to sell.
Although at the time I thought that was perhaps because it was a niche market with which I was very familiar, I'm not so sure now that is that simple. My brother and his wife are professional musicians who work together and have put out a dozen or so CDs over the years. My brother did all the publicity, distribution, putting their work into stores etc for several years. At some point, however, they got a deal with EMI. He THOUGHT that would be good for them, but in actual fact, unless you are a famous artist selling a lot, being with a major label does you no good at all. He quickly discovered he was worse off being with a big organisation that had no interest in him. Exit EMI hastily.
Another positive side of self-publishing is that you get to keep much more of the money. If I'd become a VG author I would have received royalties of less than 10%. Of course, I guess the flip side is that this is only a good equation if your book sells.
Yes, yes, and yes.re: your comment about the internet helping a book find its audience. Yes and no. It really depends. That is more true for non-fiction than fiction. With non-fiction, the author/self-publisher and small press can seek out the niche that has interest that fits. Not that it's easy with non-fiction, but it's harder with fiction.
How do you "find your audience" for a fiction novel? it's a smaller audience than non-fiction (in general), and it's also harder to identify and to reach them. If someone is interested in, let's say, how to become a circus clown, they might google "become a clown" and your website with your How To Become a Sad Clown book will likely come up in their search results. But people don't search for "well-written fiction coming of age story of a young girl" and lo and behold your book comes up. People don't search for fiction in the same way because fiction is not "subject based" the way non-fiction is. Fitting into a solid genre (like romance or sci fi) can help you find an audience, but if your work is more open ended, so is your audience.
I'm not saying the web isn't helpful to a fiction writer, it's just from my own experience and from reading several guidebooks on self-publishing , it's not nearly as effective as for non-fiction.
David David wrote: "How do you "find your audience" for a fiction novel? it's a smaller audience than non-fiction (in general), and it's also harder to identify and to reach them. If someone is interested in, let's say, how to become a circus clown, they might google "become a clown" and your website with your How To Become a Sad Clown book will likely come up in their search results. But people don't search for "well-written fiction coming of age story of a young girl" and lo and behold your book comes up. People don't search for fiction in the same way because fiction is not "subject based" the way non-fiction is. Fitting into a solid genre (like romance or sci fi) can help you find an audience, but if your work is more open ended, so is your audience."What a bitch, David. I'm lucky that I'm incompetent at writing fiction and when I occasionally try my hand at it, I would not dream of showing it to another living soul.
Of course you are right, and I can see that musicians are not comparable. You have a physical audience and a physical relationship with those who listen to your music in a way a writer does not. The internet may add to that, but you still have this physical core.
Our own business never published a novel, only poetry in the realm of fiction and I can see, thinking about what you have written, that even this is easier to market online. People MIGHT search for 'poetry'. They will never search for 'novel' or 'fiction'.
And, again, there is potentially a physical relationship between a poet and his audience in a way a novelist would never have. I've been given poems from taxi drivers; a poet whose work we used to publish would sell his poems on busses. You stand up and tell your poems to people. Somehow you just can't see this working with novels, can you?
I feel like I'm a coward writing to a brave man!
Hahaha! No, your comments are relevant and helpful. It's always just that everything gets watered down when you move to fiction. You still attempt many of the same things, it's just the increments of success are smaller.I think the distinction with music is that music (via the internet) is easier to sample. People can check out your tunes in just a few minutes and see if they like it. With a novel, yes, you can put sample chapter on the web, but it's not as enticing or easy for people to read it and it takes longer/more effort. And the full experience of the novel may build slowly--the first chapter may not do it justice.
Poetry does have a very small audience so big props to you for publishing that work. Although that audience is even smaller than for fiction, in your favor, at least the poetry readers can sample a poem fairly quickly to decide if they like a writer.
One thing i plan to do is record the novel as an audiobook and release mp3 of at least the beginning of it for free. it will be a form of sampling.
Of Doom
Author David David Katzman blogs about the process of completing and publishing his second novel.
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And even then, how much do you reject for everything you accept? Buckets of it, all good. Thanks heavens it all started coming in by internet at some point as it meant I could write apologetic replies without having to bother my father at all who always felt guilty about having to do this.
Still, the internet. Self-publishing and self-promotion. At least you have a chance now, which is so much less than you had before. Equally small publishers. It breaks my heart to think of the print runs we ended up pulping which MIGHT have found a market now. At least they'd be in the game.