Stop the Presses...Do you think one should wait for an agent or take control and get self published?

Question

I have been researching 2 self - publishing companies (lulu.com and dorrance) and I look into the Q&A on yahoo about them...you guys say don't self publish because it's not a real company and you won't be established as a real writer...but with multiple query letter rejections we have to put out our work somewhere for exposure...

How will they know who we are if they don't take a look? If we have at least one book published even if it is self-publishing we have some thing to fall back on the next book we plan to write...

Do you think one should wait for an agent or take control and get self published?

Answer 1

You are facing the problem all authors have. Self publishing will get copies of your book into your own hands, but nobody else's. If that is all you want, go for it. otherwise you must keep grinding at getting an agent or publisher interested.  

Answer 2

i have waited...and waited....and waited for an agent until i was at the point of giving up writing becuase i didn't think i was good enough. Try getting an agent, it's better in the long run, but don't try too hard. Set a time limit and if nothing has happened take it into your own hands. Best of luck, darling! =]

"My Darling, you're such a child,"--Rhett Butler. [of no significance besides i love the book!]

Answer 3

It depends -- how much do you REALLY know about the book publishing business?  Contracts?  Royalties?  Foreign rights, etc.?  If you're current on all that, then hey, go ahead and be your own agent.

Frankly, though, if you can't market your book to an agent, who is only one person, why do you think you'll do any better self-publishing?  

Answer 4

That depends. Do you want people other than your friends and family to read your book? Do you want to make money from your writing? Do you want people to see you as a professional writer, or as someone who had to self-publish (because, I'm sorry, but that is what people will see)?

Having "at least one book published" means nothing if it's vanity published. You didn't have a book published; you had a book PRINTED.

Now, having said that, Lulu is a good reputable company for what it does (Dorrance is not.) If you're writing, say Non-fiction on a specialist topic, self-publishing can be a very good idea. If you run a website about model trains, and write a book on a specific model-train topic that you know other midel train enthusiasts will buy, go for it. A major publisher probably won't touch that book, it's only a small market, but you could do very well with it.

But for fiction...self-publishing simply isn't a good idea.

If you have multiple query letter rejections something is probably wrong with your query. If you have multiple rejections of your partial ms with no requests for the full, something is wrong with your writing.

Why not take control by writing another, better book? All of us have "trunk novels"--those first couple of books we wrote, which we thought were amazing but now see are terrible. I'm NOT saying yours is terrible, please don't misunderstand me. I'm just saying not every book we right is going to get published, and that's okay.

Set your book aside for a few months. Write a new one. Spend some time on places like the Absolute Write Water Cooler; post your query for critique, post a short excerpt from your work for critique, read a lot of threads. Read a lot of books. Keep working!

It IS hard. It requires a LOT of work. But we keep doing it because we love it, and if we're lucky and talented we get there in the end.

Good luck! :-)

Answer 5

i would try to get an agent.  work on perfecting the letter & synopsis & then just keep sending it out.  look into attending a writer's conference.  often, there are agents & editors there & the cost of the conference is well-worth the chance to talk to one face to face.

meanwhile, start working on your next book so you are not wasting time while waiting to hear back.  send out queries to lots and lots of agents, not one at a time.  whenever you get a rejection, make sure you send out a new query right away.

the way i see it, if you self-publish, you are "wasting" that book.  sure you can show it to agents but since anyone can self-publish these days if you have enough $, it's not going to impress them.  if they're not impressed with your query, are they going to be impressed with your self-published book?  i think not.

it's very hard to sell self-published books (from what i've read) unless  you're going to spend many hours trying to push them at bookstores & fairs, etc.  so basically, that story is lost - no "real" publisher is going to take it after you've self-published.  so you're not really getting any exposure with a self-published book.