At the Crossroads

June 2nd, 2010

No, I’m not selling my soul. I’m at the sort of crossroads where I have two options. I’ve been at this cross roads before. And I’ve ventured down both avenues. Here I am again… with a decision to make. One road has me continuing down the path of traditional publishing—finding an agent, jumping through all the hoops. The other road leads to self-publishing—Lulu.com, CreateSpace on Amazon or something similar.
This book is going to happen, one way or another. And it’s going to be big, one way or another. I remember writing, at one point, though, I’m not sure if I posted it or not, that self-publishing would be the easy route—that it wouldn’t take much faith. I’d like to take that thought back. Self-publishing would, indeed, make Lost Gods officially published rather easily. But I’m not stopping there. I plan to make a career out of writing. Turning a self-published book into a success—that will take some faith. You can count on one hand the number of authors in the modern era of publishing that have self-published and became a success. Christopher Paolini is the most recent that I know.
What lead to this train of thought, you ask? Well, minutes after my last blog, where I was talking about how it’s been a week since I sent the Steve Laube packet, I checked my mail—my snail mailbox—and right there on top was a letter addressed to me in my wife’s handwriting. My wife was sitting beside me in the car and recognized her own handwriting. I reminded her that she wrote out the SASE for the Steve Laube packet. It was a form letter rejection. My heart sank just a little bit. I was not in full-blown discouraged mode, but I had been feeling pretty good about Mr. Laube.
I’ve emailed everyone I can email in the agents list. The next step would be sending out snail mail queries and emails to small publishers that accept unsolicited queries. Then, I thought… what am I waiting for? This thing’s going to happen whether Bantam publishes it, Simon and Schuster or I publish it.
My wife, who, at one time, was against me self-publishing Lost Gods, is behind me with whatever I want to do. Now, I will not only need the help of my wife, but I will need the help of all my friends and family. I’ve got a new logo idea for merchandise on Cafepress. If someone wants to help me with the logo, that would be super. There’s only so much I can do with Paint Shop Pro 7. Profit from Cafepress will help with the cost of getting books to send to reviewers at newspapers and magazines. I’ll need help, also, with getting a book trailer made—like a movie trailer, with some deep-voiced voice-over guy saying cliché things, only it’s about a book… and mine will be less cliché. The camera, I have. The voice-over guy, I have. The film editing software, I have, too. The actors, I don’t have. So, who’s game? Anyone want to stand at the crossroads, ready to venture forth, one way or the other?

“All that I wanted were things I had before. All that I needed I never needed more. All of my questions are answers to my sins. All of my endings are waiting to begin.”
From Circle by Slipknot