Why I Decided Not to Play the Writer's Lottery

Whew, I survived another crazy Thursday!

The kids are all in their rooms and quiet, even if they are not asleep. Not bad, considering they had cotton candy for a treat at pack meeting tonight. I kind of expected them to be bouncing off the walls. It's so peaceful I'm taking a moment to ramble a bit in my blog.

A few days ago I read a story about an author named Erin Morgenstern who has her first novel coming out in September. The publishers and bookstores are taking huge bets on her-- they are hoping she has written "the next Harry Potter." Her book was auctioned and her advance from the winning publisher was in the six-figure range-- astonishing for a first-time novelist. The interview I read makes her sound likes she is a tad bit nervous that all the hype will backfire though. (I would be too. Do you know what happens if they give you a $1 million advance and you don't sell enough copies of the book to equal that much in royalties? You have to pay the money back. I would be so nervous that money would just be sitting in my bank in case I had to give it back!)

Stories like that always make me sigh just a little though. What I wouldn't give to make a million dollars off a book I wrote! We could pay off our house and Terence's student loan, and we could set aside the rest so that Terence could continue to provide for us without stressing about overtime making up the difference. It would be wonderful!! Of course, you can't make that kind of amazing money from a book you self-publish. But I had those two manuscripts finished-- why did I opt for the self-publishing way when it couldn't have hurt to at least try to win the publishing lottery?

Reason #1-- I found the whole process way too long and costly. I did research what it would take to find an agent and try to get my stories published by a "real" publisher. Finding an agent sounded like a royal pain in the behind though. First of all, my books are not easily categorized. Most likely they would fit into the science fiction genre, but there are very few reputable agents out there accepting queries for sci-fi. And in most cases, I found that they could take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years (!!) just to get back to you at all. That's a LONG wait, just to find an agent. Also, it would have cost me a small fortune in postage and printing costs to ship copies of my manuscripts to these agents, just on the slim hope that they might eventually get around to looking at them.

Reason #2-- Related to #1, finding an agent. Most of the advice from published writers and agents suggested that it is sheer luck if they will even look at your stuff if you don't already have a "resume" of published writing. Usually that means you have to get some magazine articles or short stories published first. I tried, but I can't write short stories for squat. If I'm interested in something enough to write about it, I always end up writing and writing. Apparently I am simply a novel writer, not a short story writer.

Reason #3-- I was too impatient. I wanted to share my story NOW. I had friends and family that wanted to read it, and I wanted to be able to talk about it with others. Going through the standard pipeline looked like even in a best-case scenario I was looking at a minimum of two years before I had a book in print.

Reason #4-- It was too stressful. Just the thought of sending my precious stories out and getting rejection notes was making me physically sick. Quite frankly, though I think my books aren't bad and are fun to read, I don't think highly enough of my own writing to think for a moment I would capture the interest of an agent, let alone a publisher. And I don't think my fragile writer's ego could have handled a bunch of people confirm my worst fears-- that my stories are second-rate (or third-rate, or fourth-rate. . . ). Even if I did succeed, I figured they would want to turn my stories into something they are not to make them more "publishable." Probably by adding exactly the kind of scenes that I loathe.

All this could just be negative noise in my head. Maybe I would have had an agent bite quickly and enthusiastically. Maybe I would have been picked up by a publisher that then would not have expected me to change everything I love about my books. Maybe they wouldn't have made me become a one-woman-sales-force for the book, touring around the country.

But in the end, I decided it was better all around for me to find an inexpensive way to come up with nice, printed copies of my book in a reasonably short time frame. That way I could do what I wanted to do all along: share my book who those who might be interested and who might enjoy it. So for those of you who have picked up a copy of one of my books, thank you very much!! The best reward is when I hear how much you enjoyed the story. It makes all the work I did to get the stories out there worth it!