Writing About Publishing

In addition to dashing the hopes and
dreams of aspiring young authors and
authoresses, this is what I'd be doing
if I worked for a publishing company.

This Is Seriously Ironic.

It has taken more time, energy and effort for me to publish my novel than it did for me to write it. And that is just sad, considering the fact that my novel is five hundred ninety-four pages and one hundred eighty-seven thousand words long. 

From start to finish, Mermaids in the Fish-Tank took fourteen months to compile. I wrote most of my first draft in the course of a single month--November 2008, to be exact. For those of you who have never heard of it, November is National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo.org), and it is a great way to get your creativity kick-started if you want to do some writing. The goal of it is to make you completely let go of your inhibitions and write whatever comes into your head until you reach the 50,000-word mark on the 30th of the month. Every week a new encouraging video is posted on the site, most of them featuring caffeine overdoses and viking hats, and even throughout October and December the participants receive hilarious e-mails about how to plan your writing and where to go with it.

I wish the publishing world were as friendly as NaNoWriMo.

Don't listen to a word I say, because I have never actually contacted a publishing agent (I could never afford to hire one), but I've heard comments from publishing agents that were pretty discouraging. Basically the gist of them is this: 

'No one will ever want to read anything you've written, so don't even try. Is your book any good? Probably not, but even if it was, there is at least one on the market that's better, so it's no use trying to compete. The world is full of unread words and paperbacks rotting in warehouses. Do you want to end up like that? I didn't think so. Then back off and stop trying to sell me your insipid manuscript.'

Maybe I was interpreting the seminar a little too strongly, but I can't shake that condescended-upon feeling. Publishing agents scare me. Part of the reason for this is that what they said was so true of me. One woman explained that only in a very limited number of situations is self-publishing a good idea. (My novel has been self-published for over two years.) Because, she explained, nobody knows about it. (A grand total of two people have bought my book at retail price.) And if, she explained, you ever want to sell a previously self-published book to a publisher, the only way they will ever consider buying it is if you somehow managed to acquire a significant readership during the time it was on the market, thus proving that the book would be popular enough in bookstores to earn the publisher some money. (A total of zero people, other than myself, have read my book.) Which means, she explained, that you yourself must have some marketing savvy and be able to draw people to your book using modern means such as The Internet.

This was the point in the seminar at which I began to hate her and every other person even remotely associated with publishing companies, because this was the point at which I realized that no matter how hard I worked, my book would never become popular. I know this because I have been promoting my book on the internet for several months and not a single purchase has resulted from it. And yet, people who write romance novels--even vampire romance novels, for heaven's sake--get published. Why?

I have concluded the publishing world is made up of a snobby bunch of business executives who have never read Paradise Lost or The Odyssey. If the time periods in which those works were written had publishing companies like we do today, our culture would be dead. Books like Mermaids in the Fish-Tank would never be written--and I, for one (probably the only one), would be sad.

Preview and rate Mermaids at https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1097246!

Thanks for reading,

Brooklyn