Book Publishing

You had written your book! Like how many people even get to say it.. “I had written a book!” Doesn’t it sound so magical when you tell people about your wonderful achievement, you have written a book, next what you want to do .. you dream of getting a wonderful literary agent that will make your wishes come true (about your book) like a little Fairy Godmother .. So you go on learn the whole submission process, what it entails.. You go on submitting it to a literary agent or two, or ten and then hope that they all will respond to you with at least an email back “Thank you but not interested” or “Not looking for this genre right now” or even a “NO” would do. You just sit and wait for that response, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 10 weeks, 6 months, whatever time they may tell you that they will respond to your query. And at once you pass that 4-6-10-26-week mark and you get nothing, no response from those agents. Don’t get me wrong, not all of the literary agents are the same, there are a few that actually respect the time you as an author have put into submitting your query to them, the time you took to create that crazy proposal, outline or whatever else they wanted with their specific requirements. The least you as an author expect is a response back. You will be dreaming if you actually get a critique back from them. When you are a first-time author and hope that you will actually get picked up by a publisher or a literary agent, it sounds so exciting.. But really, not that you have a bad book, you had it well written, you had it edited, re-edited, checked and rechecked, but you still don’t get any response after 6 months of your submission. Literary agents may slam me for this, and yes I understand that A LOT of books they get are not even close to being considered as books.. But again, a simple response is what I am talking about. And if you say you get hundreds of the queries. To reply with a NO takes 3 seconds…

In addition to the no response what I found that no matter what the book was about, they wanted to make sure I was on Social Media. I had queried so many literary agents with my book “Perfect 40!”, and majority of the decline responses that I got were because I wasn’t a social media diva influencer nor was I a celebrity (who can promote her own book). I didn’t have a bad reputation, I had none because of who knew me and whom I knew. Well this is where I was thrown off.. well then what’s the point to even get a literary agent or a publisher? Yes they know people and they know processes of doing this whole ‘book sale thing” and that’s why as an author I want to get into a contract with them… But in my case I had to learn it all on my own and at some instances I was afraid to take certain steps and make certain moves because I wasn’t sure what I learnt was the right thing to do… but other than the actual process of publishing as an author if I had 500,000 followers on social media – why would I need a literary agent and a publisher? If I can simply publish the book myself, promote it to my followers, and bam maybe sell quite a few books the first month! Why do I need a literary agent? 

Throughout my querying process I was hoping and waiting that some literary agents may actually respond and give me a chance with a publishing deal.. but I just got so disappointed in the whole query process. Some literary agents don’t “bother” to respond to you for 6 months or ever, yet they don’t want you to query another literary agent at another agency (again this doesn’t apply to every literary agent, but to majority of them). How can an author sit and wait for 6 months by querying only one agent at a time, waiting for a response, and get no response at all!

Something to keep in mind some queries are very simple, as simple as a query letter. Where others want a proposal catered to their requirements as short as 10 pages and up to 30 pages. I found this requirement ridiculous, you had just finished writing 200 plus page book, and now you need to create a proposal with a marketing strategy that you may have in mind, with description of a book, chapter outlines, blah blah…. Wait a minute! Well if I have that marketing strategy outlined and it makes sense and it is not some made up jumbo mumbo stuff.. I as an author can act on it myself. Yes, not a lot of authors have that marketing budget I agree.. but seriously what is a real purpose of a literary agent and a publishing house? 

I was so discouraged after getting no responses, at some point it even made me feel so cheap…I spent so much time writing my book, perfecting it as much as I can and it is not good enough for them. Considering what they get paid on the book sales and what an author makes – I decided not to pursue anymore literary agents and publishing houses and do publishing myself. Yes, I didn’t do all what they would do, but oh well. My book is published, I am doing book signings, I am promoting my own books and that’s all-what matters!

If you are an indie author like me, don’t get discouraged. Just because they didn’t like it doesn’t mean it is not good, Do your part, research, learn and publish your own masterpiece!