Book thoughts.
There is much muttering about self-publishing on agent's blogs at the moment. Not surprisingly, agents think it's a bad idea.
So do I.
If you write a book with a small, very specific market then self-publishing can work. You know it's only going to sell about a hundred copies or less. You know a mainstream publisher won't be interested in that and neither will an agent. So put it on Lulu, print it and sell it.
That works very well for academic books which have a very limited market and which are usually insanely priced anyway. A Lulu-produced book would be cheap in that market.
It's not going to work for novels unless you know how to edit, market and promote a novel. I know none of these things.
The route I have chosen is the agent route. So far, no luck. If luck continues to elude me, then I'd go for publishers who accept unagented submissions. Then, with one published book, I'd try the second through the agent route again.
It's not ideal. I don't know if a contract is good or bad. I don't know if I'm signing away too much. Even so, a book published that way counts as a publishing credit. A self published book does not.
I'd rather not send Samuel's Girl out by that route because it's the first of a series. I could sacrifice Jessica's Trap, Vincent's Will or Nobby the Goblin to be my first market-break-in without screwing up the series. Maybe it would be a good idea to get one of them into shape and send it direct to publishers.
Nobby's story might be best to start with. It has no sequel. It's the only fantasy of the bunch, a fantasy without magic and with a genuinely indestructible bad guy. A chosen one who's dead before he even knows he's chosen. It has enough anti-cliche's to stand up, I think.
So I'll consider getting that one finished and sent out. I can do that while Samuel's Girl continues to rack up rejections.
No self-publishing though. Not for me.
