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Getting a book published after 13 years of trying and failing to do so should be that “Rocky dancing with arms raised in victory at the top of the steps” moment in every writer’s life right? Well, hold on there sunshine because reality is about to swing its concrete shin MMA style right into your jubilant metaphorical nut sack.
I got serious about writing fiction in 1997. In 1999 I started wring my first novel and completed the first draft two years later. Another year and a half of re-writes and I shakily e-mailed off my first round of query letters to literary agents. Two more years of polite “Thank you, but no thanks” style rejection letters and I moth balled my sad little novel.
I kept writing short stories though and would occasionally publish a few in small and mid-level literary journals. Then in 2009 after unknowingly joining a cult based on some very dodgy gurus an idea for a novella popped into my head. Imagine “Illusions” by Richard Bach meets “A River Runs Through It” by Norman Mclean meets “Affliction” by Russell Banks and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the major themes that were spinning around my brain at the time.
But I put it off and didn’t start writing it until 2012. It was the story that just wouldn’t go away, so I finally sat down and wrote it. A year later I had a 30k word novella. I anguished a bit about whether or not to try and make it 20–25k words longer since I knew most literary agents wouldn’t want to have anything to do with a novella written by an unknown like myself. I did some research though and found a handful of small publishers that accepted unsolicited submissions for novellas. After a year of major edits I started sending it out. Another year of rejections followed and then in mid-2015 it happened. There was a massive tremor in the Force and for a brief moment the gate keepers stepped aside and my little novella was ushered into publishing Valhalla (or so I thought).
Any writer will tell you that receiving your first acceptance letter or e-mail is one of the greatest and most memorial moments of your entire writing career. And though it wasn’t my first acceptance letter it was by far the greatest moment in my writing “career”, and still is actually, though a very tarnished one.
I knew enough to know that this didn’t mean I was going to be the next John Steinbeck. Usually it takes three or four novels before I writer gets noticed if they ever do. But the fact that my novella was going to be published was a huge boost for me. Over the next year and a half I wrote a 77k word novel and a 25k word fictionalized memoir. It was one of the rare times for me that the writing just flowed out. Wondering whether or not all the time and effort I put into my writing is worth it has always been a big motivation killer for me, so getting published was a massive boost during that time.
That was nearly three years ago. My novella was released in May 2017, exactly a year ago as I write this. I have to admit the cover is gorgeous, I proud of the title, and I still think it is a great story. If only the editing had lived up to those three things as well.
As soon as I could I ordered a copy. My publisher was supposed to send me 10 copies, but I live in Japan, so I figured it might take them some time to arrive and I couldn’t wait. I received my copy about a two weeks after it was released.
But as I started reading through it I found a lot of typos and errors (over 100) as well as some weird formatting mistakes. I sent them an email immediately with a list of all the mistakes I had found. They apologized, said it was partially due to the printing company, and promised to fix them all. In the mean time I started trying to market my novella as best I could by joining every Facebook group I could find that allowed you to promote your book for free. I was hoping that they would fix all the errors and send out new copies quickly so no one else would have to buy the flawed ones. I sent an e-mail to all my friends and relatives apologizing if they had already bought copies and told those that hadn’t to wait a bit until the new ones were out. At this point almost all of my earlier elation of being a published author was almost gone. I also had very mixed feelings about promoting my book now that I knew it was full of errors. I was very happy with the overall story though so I decided to push on and see if I could keep selling copies.
I assumed my publishing company was doing the same, but as far as I can tell the only promotions they did was to tweet out my book occasionally to their followers (300 or so at the time) and that was it. I had three times that many followers on my Twitter own account. I suggested several literary journals to them I had published work in the past to contact about writing a review, but as far as I know they never did.
A few months later I arraigned a reading in the city I live in and asked my publisher to please send me my ten copies so I would have some books to give away and sell. Eventually they sent me 27, but to my horror all of them had the same errors as the original book. Of course I had to cancel the reading.
I was also supposed to receive a small advance. I told my publisher they could keep it since I didn’t really need the money that much and I was hoping maybe they would use it for promotions instead. As far as I know they haven’t and don’t seem to plan to either. They were also supposed to provide me with bi-annual sales reports which they have never done. And so far not a dime from them has been transferred to my Pay Pal account even though I know some copies of my novella have sold.
It wasn’t really about the money though. I had just hoped to put a fairly good first novel out there, but instead, other than the cover, it looks as amateurish as any self-published trash novel thrown up on KDP with zero forethought. I imagine it was foolish of me to think that they would do a great job on the editing. At the time I didn’t know that the trend now is for the author to submit a near perfect manuscript to the publisher even though it costs hundreds of dollars to have it done right. If they would have just said, “Hey, we love the story, but it needs to be cleaned up before we can publish it,” I would have happily paid the money and then re-submitted it.
Worse than than though is the fact that I feel fake now. Being traditionally published was a great source of pride for me and one of the biggest accomplishments in my life. Now it has become a joke and a massive set back. I actually have whole stand up comedy bits I do about it. I thought getting published was going to be a major building block towards my goal of someday earning a living solely from my writing, but I feel like I’m starting from scratch again.
It took Kurt Voneget Jr 25 years and Bukowski 30 to get there, so maybe I’m still ahead of the curve, but it doesn’t feel like it.