The Tears and Triumphs of a New Author - Chapter 10

The Tears and Triumphs of a New Author

Chapter 10

Our research so far left little doubt that we had the proverbial snowball’s chance in H--- to get picked up by a mainline publisher or represented by a legitimate literary agent.
Discouraged? Of course!
Whipped? Not by a long shot!
I’m sure the careers of many writers are nipped in the bud at this point.
Everyone dreams of being accepted by a publisher or agent. Naturally, we had visions of advances and royalties, travel and fame. But when those things didn’t come, the only other alternative we found to get ‘Lady Justice’ in print was to self-publish, and that takes hard cash.
Not everyone has the financial resources to self-publish, so I’m sure many great novels die at this point along with the dreams of their creators.
As we began to dig into the tangled web of self-publishing, we had some serious moments of soul searching. “Is it good enough?” “Is it worth the investment?” “Can we make it work?” “Can we afford it?”
Did we have doubts? You bet we did!
When my character, Walt, suffers a serious setback in his law enforcement career, his old friend and mentor, Professor Skinner offers this advice:

When things go wrong as they sometimes will
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill
When care is pressing you down a bit
Rest, if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with it’s twists and turns
As everyone of us sometimes learns.
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won if he stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow-
You may succeed with another blow.
Success is failure turned inside out-
The silver tint in the clouds of doubt.
And you never can tell how close you are
It may be near when it seems so far.
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit
It’s when things seem worst that you must not QUIT!

OK Professor, we won’t throw in the towel yet.
Let’s take some time and study the many companies who are eager to take my money to publish my book.
Sucker? Maybe. We’ll see.

The Tears and Triumphs of a New Author - Chapter 9

The Tears and Triumphs of a New Author

Chapter 9

OK, so if your chances of winning the lottery are greater than being picked up by a publisher, what’s the next choice?
Research showed that publishers more readily accepted authors represented by an agent, so maybe I need an agent to promote my work.
It certainly made sense. Even the King of Rock-N-Roll, Elvis Presley spent two years playing small clubs and state fairs until he met Colonel Tom Parker. Within a year he became a household name and one of the most famous entertainers in American music.
I went back to the internet and started collecting names of literary agents.
As I perused their websites, it seemed that whoever constructed the publishers websites also worked for the agents.
Same song, second verse. “We do not accept new authors”. “Submissions by referral only”. “We only represent previously published authors”. Etc, etc, etc!
What’s wrong with this picture?
It’s a closed system! That’s what!
Publishers won’t look at unagented submissions and agents don’t want you unless you are already published. What an impossibly vicious circle!
The only way for a previously unpublished author to break into the inner circle is to be a famous personality.
Publishers are scrambling to print Sarah Palin. I entered a bookstore recently and there were four Sarah Palin books displayed right in the front of the store. She has booksigning dates all over the country and none of this is due to her literary skills, but to her celebrity status.
And I’ll bet there are literary masterpieces languishing at the bottom of some agent or publisher’s “slush pile”, or even worse, still in the “My Documents” section of some discouraged writer’s computer.
As my character, Walt, would say, “Where is the justice in this?”