Thanks for all the kind words and advice following the rejection of A Half Life by Macmillan New Writing. Your support is much appreciated.
I guess I'm disappointed for two reasons.
Firstly, it would have been wonderful to be accepted by a proper publishing house, to become a "real" writer after all these years. Of course, one more rejection isn't the end of the world and I certainly don't intend giving up on my writing ambitions.
Secondly, getting accepted by a big publishing house would have given me access to a bigger platform for the book, a professional marketing machine. This hurts most because my aim now is to get the book read by as many people as possible and as I've said many times before, marketing is the hard bit.
I've spent the last few days trying to work out what to do next. I could send the book out again to an agent or maybe a small publishing house. The trouble with that approach is that it is slow and time-consuming and in three years time I might be no nearer to getting published.
Right now I'm tempted by the idea of publishing the book myself. Setting up my own publishing company - just like Skint Writer has done - sounds like a lot of fun, and is certainly quite a challenge. But I am a businessman after all, and although I don't know much about publishing I know plenty about starting and growing a business.
I'll play around with a few ideas on how best to go about this here on the blog over the next few posts and any help and feedback you can give me will be very much appreciated.
Oh, and Lynne, giving up on my vain attempt to get published by a traditional publisher really might mark my own personal bonfire of the vanities.
I suppose it depends on your perspective as to what constitutes a 'real' writer. I see your writing and it looks real enough to me! Get out there, put it about a bit, explore all the avenues!
ReplyDeleteSelf-publishing sounds great and will give you something new to get your teeth into (as if you haven't got enough pies already!).
Faith, my friend, it will come.
I think the professional marketing machine is pretty limited, actually. They'll market your book when it is published for a couple of weeks or so, but these publishers don't have ongoing budgets. I think that even when people do get published by a "mainstream" publisher, they have to do a lot of their own marketing, via their blogs and so on, as you are doing, Pundy.
ReplyDeleteLook forward to reading about future developments. I'll buy it as soon as it is available in some bound form, so there's one sale.