Outlining The Path Ahead

It’s easier to write about stuff when you’re actually going through it – so I’m going to save my blog posts about self-publishing until I am actually back in the throes of doing it. Approach it like a reporter. In fact - that's what I will do with the whole publishing process. 

Ergo, Avenging Glory will be coming out as a novel sometime in the next few years. Whether or not it will be published is not the question - the only question is, how? Traditional, hybrid, or self-published? 

For the first while, I will be exploring the traditional route. If and when I do hit paydirt and start down that path, the process will be considerably longer – most likely entailing the hiring of an agent, the search for a publisher, working with the agent and/or editor on the mss, and then ultimately publishing the book, a pipeline I have been told can go on for as long as three years.

If I self-published the entire project, it could be done in a window as short  as a few days – but since I made the mistake with Psychedelia Gothique of hurrying it to press, I’ve decided to approach it much more experimentally the next time. 

With my current marketing plan, I am going to be self-publishing some titles leading up to the release of my novel.  It would take a major disaster in my life to knock me off course at this point in time. Whichever publishing route I take, the lead up books will almost certainly be self-published story collections containing anywhere from three to six stories – as many as four or five e-books.  So that will give me lots to talk about when the time comes.

But for now, I’m at stage one of the traditional publishing route: finding an agent.

Finding an Agent

Agents typically won’t represent story collections from writers without one hell of a track record.

If you’re another Clive Barker and you show up out of the gate with a massive and brilliant collection of short fiction, or another Harlan Ellison with multiple collections of award winning stories – agents may talk to you and even buy you a drink – but probably only in order to find out if you’re working on something long-form.

So okay. I’m out there with a big fat freaking novel. I have friends who go to writers conventions and other writers events strictly to pitch agents and publishers at various events apparently modeled after the speed-dating fad – or just taking the opportunity to meet agents face to face and pitch their projects. It’s a good method. Most agents pay extra attention to potential clients whose pitches they have already heard. If they give you the go ahead at the event, you will get around barriers. Agents not accepting random E-queries will accept queries, synopses, partials and fulls that they invited at such an event.

Since I don’t get out much to these events – I’ve been looking around for other methods. And am happy to report my discovery of a couple wonderful free tools in AgentQuery.com and QueryTracker.net that give you insights, guidance, encouragement. I’ve just sent off my first handful of queries, mostly to test the waters. I’ve already made a few mistakes and will likely make more.

So, like, this is great – finished today’s blog entry and already have something to talk about next time.

This blog will contain lots of stuff I write for Goodreads, stuff I write for Linked in and other stuff that's not on any of those sites. For instance, if I want to do a random post about why I don't feel that the film, Hereditary, lives up to the hype, I'll do that here.

Hope to see you back here soon - and if you want to deliver the first salvo about Hereditary, please do!