{"id":3967,"date":"2011-01-21T02:27:34","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T09:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=3967"},"modified":"2011-01-21T02:27:34","modified_gmt":"2011-01-21T09:27:34","slug":"sick-blegh-submitting-and-thoughts-on-self-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/sick-blegh-submitting-and-thoughts-on-self-publishing\/","title":{"rendered":"Sick (blegh!), submitting, and thoughts on self-publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Sorry I haven’t been posting much recently; I came down with a nasty fever this week, and I’ve spent the last two days recovering.<\/p>\n

It really sucks, because my two temp jobs just finished, and I was hoping to get into another writing routine.\u00a0 The jobs were sucking up all my time, though it was definitely awesome to have money flowing in.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, I caught Brandon Sanderson after his 318 class and asked him about submitting to agents while I’ve got my full ms out.\u00a0 He said I shouldn’t do it; that it would look bad if I had to turn down another request because it’s already out.\u00a0 So for now, I’m just going to sit on it and send out Genesis Earth<\/em> to other agents.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Genesis Earth<\/em> keeps getting turned down, but the vibe I get is that it’s more because of the agents’ tastes, not because of the poor quality of the book. So far, I’ve gotten one request for a full, one request for a partial, two personalized rejections, and several variations on “I don’t feel I’m the right agent.”<\/p>\n

Even if all of the latter are just nice standard form rejections, that’s enough to tell me that Genesis Earth<\/em> isn’t a crappy book.\u00a0 So I’ve been thinking, if I run the rounds and fail to find an agent or a publisher, maybe I should take the plunge and publish it for $2.99 as an e-book on Amazon.<\/p>\n

Speculation about e-publishing is rampant, and opinions are wildly mixed right now.\u00a0 According to Joe Konrath<\/a>, everyone (including new writers) should self publish their works–to wait even a day is to give up large amounts of potential earnings.\u00a0 According to Dave Wolverton<\/a>, however, new writers should definitely not<\/em> self publish, but try to break in through traditional publishing with as big of a deal as they can possibly get.\u00a0 Both authors have had huge self-publishing successes, so which is right?<\/p>\n

Well, I read an interesting guest post by Lee Goldberg<\/a> on Joe Konrath’s blog that takes the middle ground: start out with a traditional publishing deal, in order to build a name for yourself, but self-publish a couple of e-book lines shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n

So far, that seems to make the most sense to me.\u00a0 The science fiction and fantasy community is very tight-knit, and I don’t see myself becoming a major part of it through self-publishing alone.\u00a0 At the same time, it’s very difficult to make a living through traditional publishing in these genres, so once I’ve built up something of a name and a fan-base, it would be good to start self-publishing a couple of e-book lines.<\/p>\n

But then again, why not try it out now with Genesis Earth<\/em>?\u00a0 Well, a couple of reasons.\u00a0 I’m worried that self-publishing would make me look bad when I submit my other stuff.\u00a0 E-book sales tend to take a long time to build momentum, so even though the starting costs are low, the returns don’t start coming in until later–if they come at all.\u00a0 And that’s the second thing I’m worried about–that my stuff will get buried under the flood of drivel that’s swamping Amazon and other e-publishers right now.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The main reason, though, is that I feel I need to do more research to figure out what’s going on.\u00a0 Probably the most valuable thing I can do is get an e-reader and dive into the market from the consumer end, just to figure out how the system works.\u00a0 Without some hands-on experience and a good working knowledge of the field, I’m probably not ready to take the leap.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to break in through the traditional route.\u00a0 I might not make as much money as quickly this way, but I hopefully will build my name faster–and at this point, that’s more important to me than revenues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorry I haven’t been posting much recently; I came down with a nasty fever this week, and I’ve spent the last two days recovering. It really sucks, because my two temp jobs just finished, and I was hoping to get into another writing routine.\u00a0 The jobs were sucking up all my time, though it was… Continue reading Sick (blegh!), submitting, and thoughts on self-publishing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[78,89,505,503,504,502,186,599,312],"class_list":["post-3967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ge","tag-brandon-sanderson","tag-career-decisions","tag-e-books","tag-joe-konrath","tag-lee-goldberg","tag-self-publishing","tag-submitting","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-work","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-11Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3967"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3992,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967\/revisions\/3992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}