I have been out of it for a bit I guess, what with the birth of my Daughter, Liberty, and then going back to work and getting back into a schedule. and then the holidays... let us not forget those! :)
As I read through prior posts I have realized how much should be updated. I have finished my trilogy of books, finally... I still work in vain to get them published... Which brings me to the topic of this blog.
In this economy i have frequently read that the age of traditional publishing is going down hill. By traditional publishing I mean finding an agent, who finds you a publisher, who negotiates a price for your book and you get royalties... blah blah blah...Now it seems that self publishing is becoming more and more popular... and with results!
With the uprising of Kindle and other electronic book reading ability out there it is now a lot easier to get your work to the public. And on sites such as Kindle, the royalties are far greater than traditional publishing.... So which route do you take?
Do you stick to your guns and only work on that Agent, however vain that quest may be? Yes, you have people that like your work, and the agents you have sent to have all said good things about it, but none of them want to take it. Makes you wonder if they are just telling you it is good to make you feel better. But why would an agent do that? Not like they sleep better at night by telling some lowly aspiring author that their work has potential when they still reject it.
With the option of self publishing out there... why not? Now of course all the work of the agent would have to be done by you in order to self publish. You dont want to be one of those yahoos out there that publishes their work when it is in first draft form because a couple friends told them it was the best book and were really trying not to hurt his feelings.
I often wonder if those who have read my work are not doing the same thing. Just telling me it is good to spare my feelings. I trust enough of them to know they would be honest with me though. But when you receive rejection after rejection after rejection... you cannot help but doubt. Did they just see something that no one else will? Is it really unpublishable? am I silly to even try?
Then there is the other writers out there, the ones who have gone the hard route, have made it into an agent's client list, have spent the years working at it. Is it not a cheat to do it yourself just to see it in print? Is it the easy way out?
So you see my dilemma. and quite a dilemma it is, with those who support you pushing you to do something with it, to want to see something happen with it... Not necessarily for the money, or the fame (though it would be nice, i have to think realistically here)... but just to accomplish it. I do not have the dillusion that anyone other than my close friends and family will buy a self published version of my work. I know better. But I myself would like to have a hard bound copy to show my children, to read to them at night... just to say I finished it.
No comments:
Post a Comment