Um yeah… about those query letters.
So far I haven’t done much about getting my first novel Dead Mountain published. I got interested in working on my new project Cog and life sort of ran be over as well. However, I’ve given a lot of thought about simply self-publishing it as an e-book. There are a few reasons why.
- I can just work on writing. Self-publishing won’t be less work really, but I don’t have to work on making pitches and writing cover letters. Instead, I can concentrate on making the book better. I need to go over it a time or two or three more and hunt down errors. If I self-publish I want to get rid of as many errors as possible.
- Traditional publishing is a long shot. A literary agent gets tens of thousands of queries a year and may only pick up a handful of new clients. Now I happen to think I can write a good enough query letter that I might improve my odds a little, but the odds will still be staggering. Small press might have better odds, but that won’t put my book into a bookstore.
- Epic fantasy isn’t exactly a hopping sub-genre. While I think epic fantasy has a strong core of readers, that doesn’t mean it has mass market appeal. That’s another strike against me in the publishing game when the odds are already bad.
- Freedom. This has a lot of appeal. I can take Dead Mountain back into the shop and add scenes or new plot where I please. I’ll no longer have to worry about that big wordcount making it unpublishable. I think I could add some more depth to the story and make it more what I want. Not that I think it’s bad now, but there are places I thought there could be more.
Of course, there are disadvantages as well. My book will get buried in a sea of other self-published e-books out there and I don’t know how many readers it will find. A traditionally published book will get more exposure. As far as money goes, I’m not really concerned about that. I’d like to make a little so my hobby pays for itself, but I’m not counting on it. Neither traditional publishing nor self-publishing is likely to make any serious money anyhow. I’ll have to deal with my own cover art as well. I hope to find a freely useable image I can manipulate or existing artwork I can pay to get the rights to use. Commissioning newly created art is likely to be out of my price range, but I figure if I can find something existing I might not have to pay a lot since the artist doesn’t have to do anything.
There are two really big disadvantages that give me the most pause. One is the lack of an editor to sharpen up my work. I can check and re-check, but I’ll never be able to put on the polish a professional editor can bring. I do have a very intelligent wife who is thankfully willing to help me out and that will help. Still, I’d like to have that professional polish.
The other is that I can’t stick an e-book on a bookshelf. There’s an appeal to an actual hardcopy book. Sure, I could self-publish in print as well and buy myself a copy, but that’s not the same thing.
Maybe I’ll do the work and try both, putting out queries on the existing version while making a version for self-publishing. For the moment I’ll work on finishing Cog, though. I like the way my new novel is coming together.
