I never submitted A Spectre in the Stream or A Mirage in the Memory to agents or publishers. As soon as I learned about self-publishing, I knew that was my path.
The thought of waiting months or years for a positive response that would probably never come was very unappealing to me. It would have been torturous doing that, and I’m glad I decided to self pub. I’ve learned an awful lot about what it takes to transform a bunch of words into a product that readers can buy.
So why query my new series instead of self-pubbing? There are a few reasons.
I’m more patient now
Since I’ve already published, I’m not nearly as antsy to publish my work as soon as it’s complete. I can afford to wait, and the waiting isn’t a mental drain like it would have been before. Which leads me to…
Time to write the rest of the series
Querying agents can take months or years (whether the result is positive or not), so in the meantime I can work on the rest of the series and make sure each entry is cohesive before that big publish button gets pushed. Even though I outline my books, I often change things during drafting to strengthen them, and if I’ve held back previous entries, it gives me more options.
I planned on holding the books back from publishing until I’d written drafts of all entries in the series anyway, so this way, the book is at least doing something while I’m busy writing the rest.
I want to learn more about the industry
The best way to learn is by doing, and I’m keen to understand all aspects of the publishing industry. Just the last few weeks of writing query letters, submitting, and being rejected (6 and counting!) have taught me a lot. Even if the outcome is no deal (the most likely result), I’m glad I’ve tried. I understand what agents and publishers are looking for much better now.
I could reach more readers
If the clouds do part their heavenly cheeks and a publishing contract wafts down on a wisp of expelled air, a traditional publishing deal would certainly mean more exposure for my work. The hardest part of being an author isn’t writing the books. That part is fun as fuck (hard too, but also fun). The hardest part is marketing and letting people who’d like your stuff know you exist.
Contrary to popular belief, traditional publishing doesn’t automatically give you awesome marketing, but even a crappy deal gives you a baseline of exposure much higher than the default for self-publishing.
Cos fuck it
I also just wanna see what happens. If there’s a big red button saying “do not push”, you can be sure I’m going to push it because I’m curious. It doesn’t cost me anything but time to query, so fuck it, why not?
Those are my reasons. After researching agents, I’m not holding my breath that one of them will bite. Funnily enough, none of them are looking for pulp space fantasy with healthy lashings of toilet humour. Particularly one that doesn’t fall into the ideal word count range for the genre (62k instead of the preferred 80k-100k). Or one that plans to be 5 books long (for debut authors, publishers like standalones with series potential and rarely sign more than a trilogy).
But who knows? Luck, like shit, happens. Though perhaps not as often.
So we’ll see, and I’ll keep you posted 😀