Skip to main content

The Quest

I spent the last weekend on the quest.  If you’re a struggling writer, you know the quest I mean: the quest for publication.

There are lots of websites to help, but there are even more writers than websites, and getting your voice heard is a matter of trash talk.  Can your work make money?  It doesn’t matter if it’s good (I know, because I read books!), it’s a matter of can it make money.

It used to be independent publishers, fondly called “indies” in the trade, would consider non-agented books.  Have you trawled the listing lately?  Indie after indie, overrun with submissions, now only accept agent queries.

So I ate up a weekend looking for agents again.  Problem is, how do you pitch a book that’s not meant to rake in the millions?  Mine is a fun novel, a provocative read.  It will make people laugh, and it will make people think.  It won’t make them open their bank account to bleed into the publisher’s bucket.

Agents, of course, take a percentage.  If they can’t see at least six figures, they won’t show any interest. It is, in the words of Cutler Beckett, “just good business.”



I suppose this is the fundamental, prototypical divide between the artist and the promoter.  We create because we must create.  What we make may only appeal to others like us.  Writers write for writers.

Readers can be tricked into buying books ghostwritten by famous people.  Authors who don’t write their own books.  Their agents are the ones with winning smiles.  Those who read the books are the losers.

If only the indies would give a good story a chance.  Instead, I’m spending another weekend wooing agents.  I’ve been writing since the Nixon administration.  You’d think that’d count for something.


Ah, but writing my mind has only distracted me from my quest.  If I wish to get more than a dozen readers, I’m going to need an agent.  Or a miracle.  And the two are hard to tell apart.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Patterns

  There’s a pattern I’m noticing.   For fiction publishers.   Even if you aim low you’ll find it a struggle.   Part of the reason is the pattern. Lots of websites list publishers.   The smaller, hungrier presses either eventually close or get to a place where they require an agent to get in.   That’s the kiss of death. Although my stories have won prizes, and been nominated for prizes, I can’t get an agent interested.   I’ve queried well over a hundred, so the agent route is one of diminishing returns.   This too is a pattern. Back to the smaller presses.   I check many lists.   What I write, you see, is highly idiosyncratic.   It’s literary but it’s weird.   Publishers don’t know what to do with it.   If a smaller press published stuff like this, I’d find it. The pattern includes writers who never get discovered.   Ironically, a number of editors of fiction literary magazines (mostly online) tell me they enjoy my wor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Creative Righting

  Rejection of my writing is a rejection of my imaginative world.   That’s why I was cheered by the acceptance of one of my stories this week.   That makes number 31. I’ve been working on a lot of fiction lately, even as nonfiction book number 6 is going to press.   The ideas are still there, and bizarre as ever, but publishing venues just aren’t welcoming. The other day I had lunch with a professor whose wife is also a professor.   She just had her first novel published, and so he pointed me to her indie publisher.   I went to their website to learn that they’re closed to submissions.   I have to admit that my latest accepted story, “Creative Writing Club,” was probably given the green light because I know the editor.   That seems like a pretty dicey way to get any notice, doesn’t it?   You have to know the right people even in the low circulation world. My fiction is difficult to classify.   It’s got speculative elements to it.   ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Maybe Okay

  A couple pieces of encouraging news, perhaps, dear struggling writers.   I had a couple short stories accepted for publication in recent weeks.   As a fellow writer recently said, “You've got to keep trying.  Somebody will like what you wrote.” That’s a bit of sunshine.   And it’s likely true.   But the stories:   “The Crossing,” about two men in a boat trying to cross the Atlantic, was accepted by JayHenge Publishing.   JayHenge is a small, but paying publisher.   I was flattered when they wanted it for their Masque & Maelström: The Reluctant Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe anthology.   Being associated with Poe in any way feels good. The second story, “St. Spiders’ Day,” had been brewing in my mind for years—yes, this is a long game!   A friend pointed me to The Creepy podcast.   Since the story hadn’t been written, I followed their guidelines of what they wanted.   It worked. I recently heard a successful wri...
Post a Comment
Read more