On why I'm doing what I'm doing

[avevale_intelligencer]

First of all, everyone who wants to be a proper published author should read this informative and helpful post from seanan_mcguire, in order to understand why I'm settling. (You should also read anything else she writes. She's good, and she's published, and she knows what she's talking about.)

I know print-on-demand isn't real publishing. It's only not vanity publishing because I haven't had to pay them for it. And I know, because many people tell me so, that the system for getting published is perfectly fair and reasonable and if I haven't got good enough to be accepted by an agent or a publisher then I just haven't got good enough, and if I don't have the gumption to keep trying and learn from multiple rejections then that's my own lookout.

Well, I've been writing since I was at least ten, and reading since I was three or four, and I'd say my comprehension is pretty good, though my problem with publishers' submission guidelines I've already documented. If there's any more to learn about how to write then I've probably missed out on it by now. I'm fifty-four now, depressed and exhausted. I don't have time to get good, and I don't have the gumption (and I know it's lazy of me) to start at the top of a very long list of agents, work through and build up a pile of letters saying "We are not taking on any new clients at the moment." No agent, no editor, has the time or the inclination to tell me what I'm doing wrong in my writing (apart from "I didn't love it"), and I shouldn't waste the poor overworked people's time by asking. They have real authors to take care of.

I need to face that this is the writer I am, this is the writer I'm going to be, and if my stuff pleases anyone at all then I should be grateful for that and not expect any more. I am not a special snowflake, or even a snowflake at all. (Check out the subtitle of the journal.) Hence Lulu.com.

(Of course, if Orion or Tor or Curtis Brown or somebody bursts through the door clutching a copy of Three Windows and crying "This is fantastic, what else have you got?" I'm not going to be cloddish about it. :) But that's a Lottery dream, and the thing about those is that real life is still there when you wake up.)

This has been to some extent a vent.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

You are good and you can write. The thing that isn't added to all the publishing 'rules' is that it also takes luck on top of talent and so forth. It's that last little thing, it's incalculable and it's Not Fair. I have been where you are, I was there for years and years. I had had consistently rubbish luck and then suddenly I had one little flash of the good stuff, and it came via a print-on-demand publisher. POD is a grey area: it's not just 'vanity', far from it and there are some very respectable POD houses (Immanion, for one). I'm currently agentless, but I like your work and if I have the chance and you have something suitable (would need to be novel length) I can and will show it to my editor, if you wish. Use the contacts you have -- Seanan and I have the same editor, and if she hears good of you from two directions, it will up her interest. But please don't give up or give in.
I look forward to your collection and I will talk to another friend who sells small press stuff at cons to see if he'd carry your book with the others. Best wishes.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I have one finished novel-length thing, which started out as a collaboration with soren_nyrond: if he says okay, I'll send it to you.

[occams_pyramid]

Thinking of small press stuff at cons - Beccon might be interested in carrying it?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Is Roger doing fiction now?

(I still owe him a book of original songs...)

[occams_pyramid]

He does all sorts of things, and has often sold stuff for other people. It can't hurt to ask!

[pwilkinson.livejournal.com]

Yes, occasionally - though he publishes more criticism and filk, and I suspect can only manage one or two publications a year. However, Roger generally has books from a couple of other publishers on the Beccon table at cons - again, it's worth asking (and he's certainly not the only publisher running tables in dealers' rooms who is quite willing to sell other books).

And, if you haven't done so, try looking a bit further around the British small press SF publishing scene (and you will very quickly find that, in this market, people are quite willing to pay £10 for a paperback the size of "Three Windows"). There are quite a few out there, some (including, but not restricted to, TTA Press, PS Publishing and Immanion) with substantial and very reputable track records - admittedly, there are others which are simply writers publishing their (often appalling to mediocre) own books.

(And you could try giving yourself some publicity on the BSFA website forums - but do make sure that you post promotional material only in the appropriate areas and also make at least one or two contributions to the general conversation.)