Do or Do Not. There Is No Try by Scott Appleton
For those of you who are interested, I love classic science fiction and fairy tales. I don’t read a lot of fantasy, but boy do I love to write it! Fantasy worlds are fantastic for story creation. I can do anything to the characters and send them on journeys that I can never take!
I was homeschooled right through high school and absolutely loved to read. I also enjoyed inventing stories of my own. Anything from Star Wars 
spoofs to alternate histories and talking animals. I always had a fascination with authors. They were the epitomes of success, the lords of the creative world, and how I longed to join their ranks.
After high school I traveled to Thailand for three months as a student Christian missionary. While there I first penned (or, in this case, typed) the beginnings of a fantasy story. For two years I worked on the story and the fictional world I created grew into a manuscript some 135,000-words long. At some point, a couple of people read the manuscript and absolutely fell in love with it. They wanted to know if I was going to try to get it published.
“Try” has never been part of my active vocabulary. I like to quote the all-wise Yoda. “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” So when I set about looking to publish my novel, I considered it a task that had to be accomplished. It was a goal that I must reach, even if it meant the path to that goal would be long and difficult. And it did prove both difficult and long.
I picked up books on writing, editing, publishing, book production, etc. and began educating myself about the whole process.
First option seemed to be to send out Query Letters to different editors and agents. I crafted a query letter and submitted to a New York publishing house with high hopes but prepared for disappointment. Six months later I received my first rejection letter. “Thank you for your consideration, but at this time your manuscript does not meet our needs. We wish you luck in your future publishing endeavors.” Yep, the letter really was that short and contained zero personal feedback. It was generic. So I sent out another query… no, I sent out half-a-dozen and all of them responded after a long wait with similar generic rejection letters.
The frustration of the query process is, typically, the editor or agent offers no personal feedback. I had no way of knowing why they chose not to look at my manuscript. Had I written a bad story, or had I poorly crafted my query, or did it not fit with those publishers? All of these were possibilities. None of them could be confirmed or denied.
Having worked as a salesman (successfully) I knew I could promote and sell my book. I decided to drop the querying process, travel to a writer’s conference, and meet the editors and agents. At least, I thought, if they don’t like my proposal, I can find out why.
I arranged an appointment with an editor from AMG Publishers because I’d researched and knew that he was looking for more young adult fantasy series. But at the appointed time the editor did not show up. I found out later that he was very sick with cancer. He made a point of asking me to have breakfast with him later in the conference, and over the breakfast table I proposed my series The Sword of the Dragon. The editor was sincerely interested and, for the next two years, he pushed my novel to the publishing board. At one point he almost sent the contract, but the board had one more meeting and my book was rejected.
The editor felt bad about this and recommended that I try one of the smaller publishers. But I wasn’t about to go through the process with another house for another two years just for that same possible rejection. Through my research I had learned that six out of ten novels never sell over a thousand copies in their lifetime. I determined to start my own little publishing company and sell my novel past a thousand copies in the first year. This, I believed, would be the stepping stone to getting in with a traditional publishing house.
I quit my hourly job and my wife and I hit the road in 2009. In five months we traveled through eleven states. I spoke to thousands of middle 
and high school students, held signings at book stores, and at the end of that first year we had sold over three thousand books. These numbers did not include digital book sales.
Meanwhile, although I was unaware of it, AMG Publishers had undergone some big changes. They had new editors who were pushing hard to publish more fantasy. Hearing of my success, they invited me to speak with them. I showed them the book I had produced and gave them details on sales and my sales techniques. They said “We’re impressed” and in a couple weeks offered me a three-book-deal. Pending those first books selling well they would sign me on for more novels.
Last year in March they released my first novel Swords of the Six, followed in October by Offspring, and just two months ago Key of Living Fire hit the stores. Already these books are among their top-sellers, and AMG has asked me to sign a contract for four more books (which will complete The Sword of the Dragon series).
Royalties with a traditional publishing house are not much, but I believe the benefit of their sales connections garners me more fans. Success as an author is all about platform. I self-published an anthology of my short fiction titled By Sword By Right and that seems to be selling pretty well.
I have several projects in the works. One is a sci-fi/steampunk novel called Star Train, which I am very excited about. I had considered self-publishing again, but my novels need marketing power put behind them. To that end I recently signed on with MacGregor Literary, and my agent will help guide my career to even bigger publishers.
I hope this answers a lot of questions. Publishing is a long road. Few succeed because most only try. Be a doer if you 
want to succeed. Never accept failure, but learn from your stumbles.
EV: If you like fantasy. If you like dragons. If you like reading, go check out Scott’s ish! He’s a cool guy, and you just might get sucked into his magical world. I hear it’s nice this time of year. May even give Narnia a run for its money.
Spread the fuego!
evega
twitter: @estevanvega
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