After far too many soul-crushing months unsuccessfully querying agents, I’ve been learning to be more gentle with myself.
Instead of committing hours, days, weeks to another sweep of queries or revising my manuscript for the thousandth time, I’ve taken a step back.
It’s helped me see things from a new perspective.
These last few weeks I’ve been actively researching the pros and cons of traditional publishing versus self-publishing. The more first-hand encounters I came across, the more I felt pulled towards the latter.
I have heard one too many nightmare stories: Going through hundreds of rejections, querying agents unsuccessfully for years. Signing with a publishing company and having it take 18 months to two years to see your book on shelves. (Yikes! I could be dead by then!) Publishing houses choosing their own cover design with little to no input from the author. And then, to make matters worse, if the book doesn’t sell the way they want it to in the first 6 months it goes into publishing purgatory and there’s not a lot of control that the author has to do anything else with it… The list of hellish worst-case scenarios goes on and on.
Hex the naysayers. Hex ‘em all the way. I’m not going to sit around waiting for a big break that may never come. From an agent who won’t work half as hard as I would for my own work. So here I am. Going to make it happen… as a coven of one.
I’ve got a long road ahead but I feel a new spark of light within me. One by one I will check off all of my many to-dos. This week’s publishing checklist included a visit to the library for a notary and another to the Town Clerk to formally submit paperwork for my DBA. (Thank goodness I already had an LLC. Made the whole process a breeze.) The rest of this week it’s round-the-clock website design. And next week I’ll be finalizing editor feedback and formatting for paperback, hardcover and ebook.
