What do you want?
That is a question I trot out most often, any subject.
Truly, I don't think enuff people ever ask that question of themselves at all in their lives. Much of what we do is semi predetermined, not really, but it looks like that from here. If you did this yesterday, that last month and the other last year, chances are I can predict where you will be i one, six and twelve months. Not really, but it seems like that when you look back.
I have reviewed times in my life. What did I do at this time and how did I get from here to there.
I think "writers write".
I don't think that everyone of us write for readers. If you want commercial success with fiction then best you find out what the punters want and give them something very much like that. I write spec ops. I couldn't write a romance to ave myself but I heard somewhere it is one of the biggest of categories, volume, success and rewards for the voluminous. Maybe I should get romantic and go there?
So you written it. Either to simply please yourself or to please others, as in, commercially appealing or you hope it is.
How do you get an agent? How do you get an agent to read you work? How do you get an agent to shop around a hundred, or more, publishers?
How do you get what you regard as success.
They seem to sometimes call self publishing the vanity publishers. You pay, they publish. If you have a burning desire to see your name up in lights", so to speak, so long as you commit the dollars, they will publish you. Is it worthwhile?
I go back to my original premise, "What do you want?" "What do I want?".
There in lies your answer.
Of course self publishing is selfish. But is the reverse true? Is trad publishing altruistic? No chance. The dollar decides.
I heard in the US they publish 200,000 fiction a year. I think only 10% break even or better.
There is always 1+ mill fiction books waiting/wanting to be published in the US.
Getting a "real publisher" in the "traditional" way doesn't guarantee success. i suggest that rejection by anyone, anywhere, at anytime is not a commercial critique.
JKRowling is the first writer to gross a billion dollars, or so I heard. She walked in, off the street, I think, certainly with no agent and no editor and hocked off Harry Potter.
Did she do what is "right and proper" by all the so called forum writing experts. Not a chance in hell.
Should she have self published? I have no idea, would it have made any difference to the outcome? I suspect she would not have got the success she got without snagging the illusive trad publisher.
Is Self Publishing TOO Selfish?
==>> HELL NO.
You want it, you pay for it, you too can have your name up in lights.
I think success is a fickle fantasy and that the random universe determines much of it.
You can get most things, legal and otherwise, if you have the right amount of money AND you know where it can be bought. I suggest that massive financial resources don't get you that far unless you KNOW something else that will help you get there. Cash flow is king, cash is not.
I write my fiction and it pleases me. That is important to me. That I do get published is a fervent hope. Am I full on trying to get published and wild success? Personally, no. It is too stressful and that irritates my severe chronic illness.
===>>>Oh yeah, name up i lights? Whoops, I am using a pseudonym, so what would I know?
wulfgang.webs.com/You may find bits of it funny. Some writer friends have visited and told me of some smiles.
