Sometimes I'm glad I listened to other people

Well, I was going to give the obvious answer, but since I’m the only guy on this site, I’m going to err on the side of caution.

This week’s topic is the best advice I’ve received about writing.

I’ve had two pieces that really hit home with my writing – one professional and one for my fiction.

Professionally, I remember  my college journalism instructor who told me “You’re going to make mistakes. Just learn from them and move on.”

It really helped my journalism, especially that time I quoted a coach who said her high school volleyball team’s loss was the fault of one player (I got suspended by the newspaper). I still write sports, but am a lot wiser since then. I still follow the advice, though I wish certain parents and coaches would have listened to those words of wisdom, as well.

But, anyway, what has stuck with me for my fiction writing is something my father told me: “If that’s what you like to write, then write it. Don’t let anyone change your mind.”

The cause of the advice: some, no, many of my friends and relatives had been on my back about giving up on science fiction and horror. According to them, science fiction wasn’t profitable. I would be better off writing regular fiction or children’s books (for those that know me, that’s a frightening prospect) or sports books (aside from the fact that I was already writing sports several hours a day). Black people don’t write science fiction.

I was really getting discouraged and then I got the advice from my dad.

I buckled down and plugged away at doing science fiction. It led to my short stories being published and to my novellas. It also led me to discovering that black people do, indeed, write science fiction and horror – Tananarive Due, Samuel Delaney, Octavia Butler, Maurice Broaddus and George Schuyler, to name a few. They kept my dream alive.

And, now, I have not only published science fiction and horror, but I also get to blog about it.

To this day, I’m glad I followed my dad’s advice.

The Best Advice I Ever Received (On Writing)

Last week, Wendy posted an in-depth interview with the founder of VampLit Publishing, and today's guest speaker ties in exceptionally well.  I met some great writers on their social networking site last summer - two of which I ran into elsewhere on the net and kept in touch.  The first writer was Wendy; we connected on the Textnovel site later and supported one another while competing in separate contests.  The second was Nicole Hadaway.  Nicole stopped by one of my pages and offered support and I in turn visited her blog to offer support. It allowed me to get to know her and her unique writing style a bit better. I'm glad I did.




Her Literary Paranormal take on the vampire genre harks back to the eloquence of some of the greats; and she's a writer Anne Rice took notice of in a review Nicole recently posted. Nicole's recent ebook, Release, is being received well by reviewers and the print version will hit the shelves later this year.



Please give a big Wicked Welcome to Nicole as she shares with us this week the best writing advice she ever received.

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Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

To thine own self be true.

Carpe diem.

It happens when you least expect it.

Plant early.

Don’t eat the yellow snow.

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The above quotes and phrases are just some of the tidbits of advice I’ve received, from my mother and my friends, as I’ve gone through my life’s journey. I’m sure you’ve heard them before. Yes, they’re cliché but they’re all true. (And besides, the Bard is never wrong!)

When I started writing my first novel, I’d gotten about a third (or maybe a quarter) of the way through, when I looked at the words on the page, the sentence structure, what scene I was trying to describe, and thought, “What the hell am I doing? I’ve got no business trying to write a book? I wasn’t even an English major, for heaven’s sakes, and this is crap!”

I was telling my good friend (who had been an English major) about my writing woes, and she said those magic words: “Good writing involves a lot of bad writing.”

Something about that phrase, it’s honesty and simplicity, clicked inside me. It was okay if what I wrote on that day wasn’t great because – I could always rewrite it. And writing does involve rewrites and redos. Bad ideas turn into golden ones once you apply the right polish.

Her advice became my mantra whenever I started to doubt my work and my abilities. It kept me going and going until ultimately, I had a novel that I could be proud of. (It features vampires in a World War II setting; they rescue Jewish children from concentration camps and kill Nazis!)

So there it is, simple and true – if you think your work is bad, or even if someone else tells you so, don’t let that discourage you. Good writing involves a lot of bad writing and good editing, so if you’ve got some messy areas that need to be cleaned up, you could be on track to something golden.





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Thanks so much, Nicole, for stopping by and blogging with us today. Insightful advice to inspire any writer to never give up and look for the good in every piece they craft.



I wish you the best with Release, and its sequel Return. You bring incredible talent to the category of vampire literature and the aptly coined phrase of Literary Paranormal suits your work well.

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And thank you all for entering in our Best Book Giveaway on the Internet! This week's contest winner for their choice of FIVE novels will be announced on the Contest page, please stop by to see the results.

Part 2 – Interview with Gaynor Stenson, Publisher

Welcome back to part 2 of my interview with Gaynor Stenson of Vamplit Publishing. Today she's providing advice for writers seeking publication and talking about changes in the publishing industry. Don't forget, we're also giving away two of Vamplit Publishing's eBooks (your choice) next Wednesday. Leave a comment to enter the drawing in today and/or yesterday's post. A comment on both days doubles your chances to win. Only one eBook per winner though. I will randomly draw two winners and announce them in my post next Wednesday. Advice for Writers Why should an author consider a small publisher rather than self-publish? A couple of authors have asked me what I can do for them and my answer has always been that I believe in them as a writer and will be as committed to your novel as you are. Self-pub always seems like a lonely place to me, beside which it’s big bucks you’re giving to savvy business people. If you are going down the self-pub route, I would advise you to do some sums on how many novels you need to sell to recoup your outlay. Look carefully at the fee and be aware that if you give your credit card details and haven’t read the small print, you could find yourself paying for extras. Don’t expect anything but basic proofreading for the set fee, as most editors charge much more because their pace is usually between four and ten pages per hour. I find that I edit between three and fifteen pages an hour.

Part 1 with Gaynor Stenson Website & Submitions www.vamplitpublishing.com Purchase Books www.ebookundead.com & Smashwords Writers' Communities vamplitpublishing.ning.com & vamplit.com Networking @vamplit

What services do you provide your authors as compared to a publishing giant or self-publishing agency?

For new authors, we offer a lot more than a big publisher would. Obviously I can’t offer what the publishing giants offer to their superstars, but I do offer one-on-one collaboration with an editor and we produce all the artwork for covers and any promotional material, we will even set you up a blog. Large publishers seldom offer so much to new authors and expect manuscripts to be presented in a highly polished format, with editing and proofreading already done. Some of our authors have proved to be networking goddesses’ and they have been keen to pass the love around, which is nice.

What are some of the warning signs you're being taken advantage of in the publishing industry?

There are so many. Firstly, if you are paying up front, whatever the company says on its website, you are self-publishing. If you are asked for your credit card details in case of extras or if you go onto the website and there are thousands of books of low quality, your alarm bells should start to ring. Even if you are accepted by a large publisher, ask about claw back. This is where you only get your royalties after all the costs of production are met and is quite common.

What would you suggest to any author looking to publish?

Don’t get your mum or friend to read your novel and think that it is edited, unless said person is an editor, of course. Practice writing a query letter or email. I’m completely turned off if a query is full of grammatical or spelling mistakes. Think of your synopsis as a shop window, one that will get the editor to browse. Writing compelling prose isn’t enough, you need the whole package. I could write pages on this, but most importantly, think carefully before spending your hard earned cash. On her website, Anne Rice puts it quite succinctly: if you have to pay, it’s not publishing, it’s vanity publishing. However, there is a new breed of author for whom self-publishing is a viable option. If you have a disposable income and the savvy to pull it off, then give self-pub a try. If as an author you decide that you don’t want to go through the archaic and often cruel rigmarole of submission, think before you sign up with the big self-publishers. Ask yourself how much of what the self-publishing company is offering you can do yourself and if the answer is some or most of it, spend the money you save on marketing your novel and a holiday.

Since you have started a publishing company, what are some of the things you have realized writers are uninformed or don't understand about publishers and the process of publishing?

Tricky question, writers don’t on the whole seem to realise this is a business. Last year I wrote twenty rejection emails in one day. My point being, that my business is new and I will give a writer a lot of leeway in their style (that can be fixed), but not their content. Don’t just blanket send your manuscript to every publisher you can find in The Writers’ Handbook, do some research. As a writer you should love to fact find, and that should not stop when you’re looking for a publisher. Send the right manuscript to the right editor and make sure your query and synopsis are outstanding.

One of the other things I think some writers don’t understand is that, new or old, big or small, all publishers expect the author to get out and publicise their own novel. What small publishers don’t have is a dedicated sales team to push your novels into stores, so if you find an outlet for your novel then tell your publisher. You need to find a way to build a relationship with readers and the internet has helped writers get out there and work their novel. All writers need a web presence for their novel.

What other advice would you give to writers who are serious about being published?

Don’t give up, but don’t ruin your life waiting to be a superstar. Being an author is a great thing, but enjoying the process of writing is the work of a lifetime. Seeing your novel in print or ebook format is important, but it is the writing which makes you special.

On The Future of Publishing

What are your opinions on the evolution of publishing, especially in regards to ePublishing. Where do you see the industry in the next 5 to 10 years?

It’s times like this I wish I had a crystal ball, but that would take all the fun out of life. I personally think ePublishing is going to be enormous, as reading has become very sexy again and, although the market share is still small, the year on year growth, even through the recession, has been amazing. Kindle ebook sales went through the ceiling this Christmas and the instant fix that ebooks give the reader is addictive, so I believe we will see an exponential growth in the industry over the next 5 years, as the price of readers decrease. The market has always been mostly women, but with the advent of a gadget, who knows, the whole reading demographic could change in the next ten years. I remember reading, about ten years ago, that the horror/fantasy market was dead, but look what’s happened. I think, when things settle down, e-publishing will find its place. Once this generation of readers hit middle age and e-readers are sold on their ability to enlarge text, we will find a whole new market, with a disposable income and the spare time to read. I know I prefer to read from a screen where I can adjust the text size; up to now readers of a certain age have had to settle for large print editions and availability may be limited and the cost prohibitive. Libraries will be able to stock every book ever written and, instead of making the twice-yearly trip to goodwill or charity shops to clear space on our shelves, we will be able to store all of our books on a nice clean e-reader.

How do you feel about some the recent competitive moves between Amazon and Apple in regards to selling ebooks? How will this effect your company? How do you see it effecting authors?

For us it’s all good, we like the idea of competition. We are working with an apps developer and all our titles will be available on Apple – Dance on Fire by James Garcia Jr is already available from the Apple bookstore. This is possible because the apps developer takes a small cut for every ebooks sold and Apple only take a very reasonable 30%. We also use Smashwords for our conversion and our ebooks are now available in Kindle format without us having to pay Amazon the 65% of purchase price they expect. I have nothing against Amazon and if I’m looking for a book, I usually look there first, but I see blogs with affiliate links to Amazon and I keep wanting to recommend Smashword’s affiliate programme which gives authors and publishers the chance to set their own rates. So a blogger who has links to books they’ve recommended can earn up to 80% of the ebook price. As a small, British publisher I think competition between the large stores is a good thing. I hope ebook stores, such as Smashword, who charge the publisher or author a very reasonable 13% of list price to sell your novel, get a larger slice of the sales pie chart. Converting readers to buying from diverse sellers can only be helped by larger companies fighting it out. If you are considering self-pub, we are working on an ebook for authors on how to publish their novels free of fees. It will take the author from typing The End right through to setting up a website and marketing their books again for free.

I’d like to finish on a positive note, which is sometimes hard as the odds are against you, but the fairytale ending is out there for any writer to find. The changing face of publishing is opening up new opportunities and you can only take advantage of them if you’ve a positive attitude and a belief in yourself as a writer.

Part 1 – Interview with Gaynor Stenson, Publisher

Considering this week's topic on our publishing progress, I thought it only fitting our guest be a publisher. So, today and tomorrow we will be talking to Gaynor Stenson of Vamplit Publishing. Here in part one, I asked her questions about her company. In part two, she'll provide valuable information for writers seeking publication, as well as provide her opinions on the future of publishing. I met Gaynor early last year on one of the popular online writer's communities. In the beginning, I only knew her as a talented dark poet. As I got to know her online, I was intrigued when I found out she was venturing into the publishing industry. It was fun hearing about her progress throughout the year and being around for the launch of her business. I also enjoyed getting to know some of her authors and reading a few of the books she's published. I have to say, she has a keen eye for talented writers, one of which, Nicole Hadaway, author of Release, you'll meet next week as a guest blogger. We are also giving away two of Vamplit Publishing's eBooks (your choice) next Wednesday. Leave a comment to enter the drawing in today and/or tomorrow's post. A comment on both days doubles your chances to win. Only one eBook per winner though. I will randomly draw two winner and announce them in my post next Wednesday.

Website & Submitions www.vamplitpublishing.com Purchase Books www.ebookundead.com & Smashwords Writers' Communities vamplitpublishing.ning.com & vamplit.com Networking @vamplit

And now, without further ado...

You are a new publisher, Gaynor, releasing books for less than a year so far, how hard was it for you to start your company?

To start was actually easy. I placed my name and website address on a number of writers’ sites and ran a competition, it was that simple. I began to receive submissions almost immediately. That is really an oversimplification, as I spent the two years before researching and working on a business plan and have been proofreading and editing for years, but starting isn’t that difficult. Our vision for Vamplit Publishing is for quality, rather than quantity which we thought was more important in the beginning. I did start out with a couple of other editors prepared to come on board, but unfortunately they didn’t understand the genre and thought that copy editing was sufficient for our market. I have a passion for vampires and the fantasy genre and this is what drives our company.

How do you feel your publishing company stands up against the competition?

I think we stand up okay, on balance we are so very new that it is hard to make a comparison. We are interested in publishing more literary novels, Nicole Hadaway coined the phrase Literary Paranormal, and I like to think that will make us standout from the competition in the long run.

What is the best thing so far about having your own publishing company?

The writers are the best thing about having a publishing company; reading a manuscript and getting a tingle. Reading and editing it is a big responsibility and one we take very seriously. It doesn’t matter how many novels we have waiting to be edited, the manuscript we are working on at the time is the only thing that matters. I’m editing a novel at the moment and its turning out to be a longer project than anticipated, but at the end of the day we won’t drop our standards just because of time constraints.

What genre(s) do you publish and what made you decide to publish them?

Ours is a broad church as far as genre, we started out listing Gothic, horror, fantasy, vampire, sci-fi and crime. Now, thanks to Nicole who coined the phrase on Marrisa Farrar’s blog, we are going with Literary Paranormal. Really this answers another of your questions as well, because if I like a novel it doesn’t matter too much it doesn’t fit into a box. The best bit about being a publisher is that I can be flexible. Dear Diary, The Daily Thoughts of a Serial Killer by Raven Usher will be published later this year and I can’t say it fits into any particular category. If you imagine Hannibal Lecter and Bridget Jones having a love child, I think you get a fair picture of this novel. I absolutely loved this manuscript and when I read it, it gave me shivers.

Why I publish in this genre has nothing to do with the current boom. I discovered my love of the vampire as a literary icon at University ten years ago, when it was fairly unfashionable to be obsessed with vampire fiction and I can’t seem to let it go. I find it fascinating that we can chart changes in society from Bram Stoker’s Victorian morality to the heady days of 1970’s pre AIDS sexual freedoms and Anne Rice’s beautiful young male vampires. The title of my dissertation was The Vampire as Polymorphic Metaphor: A study of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century vampire fiction. Catchy isn’t it?

What would you say are your greatest challenges and frustrations as a small and new publishing company?

Challenges: working to very tight deadlines and the fact that what I do has a fluidity to it that can catch me unawares. When things change I have to make sure I change with them. Frustrations: well not the writers, they are the high point. I think the fact that I know where we are going and want to be there already may be the hardest thing. The next five years are going to be long and hard, and the vision I have for Vamplit Publishing makes me impatient.

How many books have you published so far and how many more books will you publish in 2010? How many are new authors and how many repeat authors?

Last year we published eight novels and this year we have eight scheduled for the first half of the year. I’d closed our submissions before Christmas when my reading pile went over 50 manuscripts. The only limit we have is on editing and we refuse to drop our standards on that point. Two people work on every single manuscript. I have the final say on which novels we publish and I do all the substantive editing. When I’ve finished and the author has worked through all the edits, another pair of eyes proofreads before publishing. We have decided on quality not quantity. Realistically I think this year we will probably publish ten to fifteen new authors, four sequels and two or three second novels from authors we have or are publishing. I’m personally looking forward to publishing Return by Nicole Hadaway and Timothy C. Hobbs is working on a really great project, but I can’t really say anything about that yet as its still in the planning stage. Jevron Mc Crory is working on a second vampire novel for us and as his style is very gritty and British, I have every expectation it will be as powerful as Swan Song. I’ve read the prologue to the new novel and without giving away too much it is very different to his first vampire novel, much darker, but with more humour.

What has been the proudest moment of your writing or publishing career so far?

When we finished editing The Pumpkin Seed and Tim sent through the dedication and thanked me and my partner for all our hard work. I loved The Pumpkin Seed from my first read through and the fact that Tim had put it away and almost forgotten he’d written it gave me a personal sense achievement. Andy Boylan on Tailsen Meets the Vampire reviewed it and loved it, he saw in the novel exactly what I did, Tim’s writing is amazing.

Tell us about some of your successes and the successes of your authors.

We are starting to get some really great reviews from independent reviewers. Our success has been to actually start this business and we are working hard to make it a smoother process. Finding a print model, that we believe will work, has been the highlight, so far, of 2010. We are at the moment preparing our first manuscript for paperback publication and Release by Nicole Hadaway and Dance on Fire will be available this summer from, ironically, ebookundead.com. Although I am totally committed to ebook publishing, I know many authors want to see their novel in print and also for readers who haven’t made the leap of faith into ebooks yet. To fit with our green ethos, we will be using print on demand. I read an article in which they said that one of the materials used in road making is unsold, shredded paperbacks. The world’s mad really.

Nicole Hadaway, author of Release, had her blog highlighted on Anne Rice’s Facebook page, on February 27, 1010,  and we both got a buzz out of that as we are both fans of Ms.Rice. Sales continue to grow, but as we only started selling in September of last year, we know and so do our authors that we have a long way to go before we all buy villas in Italy or the South of France.

What is the future vision of your publishing company as in where do you see your company in the next 5 to 10 years?

The six million dollar question! I have a dream and it’s probably the same as all publishers. I want to make Vamplit Publishing known for our quality of content. I have a vision where our sales ensure our writers get a fair deal and that we never change how we deal with those writers. I don’t see us growing so large that I can’t be reached by email and I hope that we keep the standards high and aren’t seduced by the darker side of publishing. I want to be able to believe in the novels we publish.

Do you have any advice for anyone thinking of setting up their own publishing company?

Only do it if you like twenty hour working days. Before Christmas last year we worked all night through from the 23rd to the 24th because we knew the writer had Christmas week off from his day job and we wanted to give him as much time with the edits as we could. I think like writers, publishers need to love what they do and if you think this is a way to make a quick buck, forget it.

Thanks to Gaynor for taking the time for today's interview questions. Don't forget to drop by tomorrow for the continuation of the interview and to comment to win a free eBook.

Switching to My Editor Hat

Between last night and this afternoon alone, I spent close to six hours composing barely two pages of my own work that I’d been trying to get a handle on for the preceding several days. That may sound maddening (sometimes it is) but I also consider this particular experience successful.

In general, I spend way more time editing work already written, my own included, than writing new work. In the past six months I have edited one full-length work of fiction, at last count three times, and still need to do another round before it goes to press. I also edit technical documents and government proposals, which I do love as well as rely on for income.

For me, all of this has been part of my path to publication. One thing I’ve found is that it can be extremely difficult to edit one’s own work. There are some terrific books out there that help with the self-editing process. Two of my favorites are Don’t Sabotage Your Submission and Manuscript Makeover. Why do I keep buying books about something I do professionally? Because there are three types of editors (at least) needed to make a novel shine.

The first is a copy editor. Now laugh if you will, but it will be difficult to get a publisher to consider your work if your manuscript has even minor punctuation or grammar issues. A trained professional at a major publishing house or literary agency probably won’t take the time to read the incredible content you’ve created if you’ve formatted it incorrectly, use lots of  commas where you shouldn’t, or forget where to place a period. These editors will put down your work if they think it would require too much effort on their part. Why not, when they probably have dozens of other good manuscripts sitting on their desks with as good or better content as yours that require less editing? I know this from experience. When I was hiring editors, I routinely rejected resumes if they had even a single typo.

Another type of editor is one who works on the craft of writing. This editor can tell you what is cliché, where your plot lines have holes, when your characters behave out of character, and when your dialogue sounds fake or stilted. Writing a novel-length work is essentially juggling a lot of details, so a huge task that falls to both types of editors is catching factual and timeline errors, inconsistencies from chapter to chapter, instances of “telling” more than “showing,” switching points of view in the middle of a scene, or when believability collides with credibility.

Lastly, when you get that golden ticket and a New York publisher is examining your masterpiece, you will have someone who edits your work mainly for content. (And when they are done, and after you make corrections, the entire piece will again go to a copy editor to be perfected). Now, by the time this content editor talks to you, you’ve spent so long working on the piece that you can’t clearly see the forest for the trees. So you'll rely on these editors to make your work sing off the pages. They can revise a sentence to cut out words, make it more concise, and the story will fairly leap into life for the reader. Sometimes they rearrange paragraphs or suggest you cut scenes that lag—or beef them up. But, the work needs to be in near-perfect shape for it to get to this point.

How is a writer to cope? Most of us are not trained to wear all these hats, certainly not in addition to the creative one that we wore to write the book to begin with! My advice is to find a really good writing partner. I was involved with critique groups for years, and benefited tremendously from the ones that worked. What’s worked even better for me has been finding someone who could complement my own editorial skills and swap blocks of time going over each other’s work in minute detail.

Now, I can look back on five years of writing and realize how difficult it is to be the writer who wears all four hats. If you can do it, that’s great. It took me years to figure out that I couldn’t, despite being a professional editor.

Every step I take, every change I make, brings me one step closer in the publishing process. It is a long and winding road, but I’m glad I’m on it and I’m glad that you all are here watching us as the Wicked team heads down it. It doesn’t seem as dark and scary anymore, just long.

On an unrelated note, I wanted to share this great post from one of my new favorite authors who recently took on the genre vs. literary debate, a topic close to the surface for our Wicked group:

http://rebeccacantrell.com/2010/01/26/genre-vs-literary/

Enjoy!

Where am I? On the road of hard knocks

That’s probably the best way to describe how and when I have been published. I can stand as an example of what to do and what not to do when getting published. Though these lessons apply to aspiring writers, they will also show readers why they haven’t seen more of my stuff in print.

I have had short stories with Spectacular Speculations, Far Side of Midnight, Writer’s Bump (Vol. I) and SFH Dominion (out of England). I have done the old “self-published” route with my novella Crawl on Lulu.com. Now, I have the novella They Call the Wind Muryah and the anthologies Dark Tidings, Vol. I & Vol. II on Smashwords.

I was sending items out in many different directions to see who bit or nibbled at the bait. People had been after me for so long to get my fiction published that I think I wanted to placate them and not wait a year or two for a major publisher to put my books out.

Maybe that’s how I ended up at PublishAmerica and Mystic Moon Press.

Yeah, I had a contract offer from PA for Hunters. I almost took it, too, until I realized that I’d accidentally sent them my rough draft that was filled with original and rewritten text. It was unreadable and, yet, PA accepted it. I never returned the signed contract and they never missed me.

So, next up was Mystic Moon Press. Click on the above link for this sad story.

(For more on Mystic Moon Press, PA and other publishers, try the “Alerts for Writers” section put out by Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America)

Anyway, now on to my current situation.

For me, trying to get published is like Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie) where the cadets’ final passage from boot camp is to go naked out into the wilderness and survive without any help. Most gave up, some succeeded, some died, some needed rescue, and more than a few were never seen again.

It has finally dawned on me that I need to stop firing wildly and take aim at specific targets. So, I’m drawing beads on more thoroughly-researched presses, while sticking with a few steadier avenues like Smashwords and submitting short stories to Far Side of Midnight and Spectacular Speculations. It sounds a lot better than what I was doing before.

Currently, I am polishing Hunters again and I submitted Land of the Blind for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Slow Boat to China awaits a major overhaul and My Dear Mister Shane is like an orphan. With more specific aim now, I must make sure that my finished product is the best I can make it.

I am prepping a query for Leucrota Press. They’re another small press that specializes in science fiction and horror. I’ve done my research and they haven’t had any bad publicity. Yet. They haven’t appeared on the “Alerts for Writers” thus far. I plan to submit Land of the Blind first and then Hunters if all goes well.

I tell you. It’s enough to make me self-publish (meaning publishing it myself versus Smashwords or Lulu.com). Self-publishing worked for Starlene Stringer and the late E. Lynn Harris.

Ah, decisions, decisions.

What do you guys think I should do?

I’m open to suggestions. Otherwise, I’m liable to just get a few books printed and slip them onto the shelves of the local libraries with covers from other books.

Not that I’ve ever actually done that.

Well, time for me to go.

Publish Your Passion

Today marks the day of several changes at Wicked Writers. First, we’ve got a kick-butt new contest starting today. This contest is ongoing and will change from week to week, so be sure to stop by and check it out regularly. Second, we’re mixing up our theme and you should see a new look launched on the site soon.  Third, we're changing a blogger. One member of our team, Steve Liskow, dropped out for personal reasons, and we’re sad to see him go. Since his first book is due to be released this spring, I was really looking forward to hearing what he had to say on this week’s topic.

One of the things I love best about this blog is the diversity we have as a group. This week, we’re talking about where we are in the publishing process and I’m excited to hear what everyone has to say. We’ve got an author who has been published in print for almost 30 years as a journalist and who has e-published several fiction titles already. Another journalist, who has worked exclusively in nonfiction plus edited several books professionally, is still navigating the tricky path to fiction publication. And a technical writer who has also been published for more than 20 years, who is attempting to sell her first full-length fiction novel (and who luckily had an agent represent her without having to go through the grueling query process).

Lastly, we have me—the greenest member of the group, one who has decided to start my own publishing house. Why? Traditionally, the belief is self-publishing is career suicide and you would only consider it if you had been rejected so much that you’re frustrated and feel you have no other avenue to try.

Well, what if you had the number one erotica publisher (that sells 60,000 titles per month)tell you to add more sex and they’d buy your manuscript in a heartbeat? Or two e-publishers approach you and say, “Please send us your full MS. If the partial we read on XXX website is an indication of the caliber of your work, we would love to represent it.” What do you do when two small presses want to talk seriously with you about contracting your book but you feel they can’t offer anything you can’t do on your own? How about when the COO of one of those small presses tells you the book is incredibly strong and you shouldn’t settle for anything less than a contract from a New York publishing house?

Sounds great, right? But what do you do? You can’t get the New York houses to look at your work without an agent and so far you can’t get an agent to offer you representation. Now, that’s not to say you won’t get an agent, but how long do you wait? I’ve read that there are instances when self-publishing your own fiction book is a smart thing to do. Namely, when you have a novel that’s geared toward a current event and the timing in getting it to the public is key. You can’t wait for the two-year lag time a large publisher needs to get it on their roster; you need to get it to the readers while the topic is fresh in their minds.

Another instance is when you are writing a niche genre—one that doesn’t have a clear-cut spot for it in the bookstores—or perhaps, one that is currently hot in the existing, but flooded, market. The biggest obstacles my book has faced so far is exactly what has drawn readers to it. Writing a vampire story in a market that loves them right now, in addition to crossing genres to make my story engaging and a page-turner, are both exactly what has confused agents on how to sell it to an editor.

My goal in starting my own publishing company was to cut out the middle and get my book the exposure it needs now. I will probably not make any money on this venture, I’m aware of that. With this first book, it’s not about the money. Don’t get me wrong—I’d be thrilled to have a runaway hit on my hands, but I'm a realist. If I can sell enough copies to attract a New York publisher’s attention, then I will have done it based on taking risks and trying something outside the box—and that will make all the difference to subsequent books in the series.

If you believe in your work and you're serious about your career, don’t leave it in the hands of someone else. No one can sell my book like I can. No one will care if I fail, except me. I have faith in the thousands of readers who have told me they love what they've read of my book. They are the true gauge in whether or not a story is worthy—not an agent or a publisher.

I encourage you all—think outside the box and don’t be afraid. You are the master of your own destiny.