What Now?

For maybe ten years now I've been writing ferociously. I dreamed of the day it would happen. A book being published. That was the goal. And then, it happened...

I'll never forget the day I got the email. I opened it, expecting to find the usual Thank you for submitting your work. The thanks part was usually followed by Unfortunately, I didn’t connect with this, or Regretfully… or who can forget the tried and true, The publishing industry is a very selective… blah blah

But this email didn’t have a but, an unfortunately. It had something beautiful.

We would love to publish…

Wait, I double checked it. Yes, we would love to publish.

And there it was, I had my first publishing contract.

So, yay. Success.

So I found a publisher. A small, but supportive publisher. And I’ve been with them ever since. And everything is great, it truly is. I’ve actually signed eleven contracts with them. I’m even called an inhouse author, which makes me feel a little bit like a monkey on a typewriter but in a good way.

Again. Yay. Success.

But… Unfortunately…

I think it’s natural to want more. The next thing. To see what else. So after a blissful two years of not querying agents, I submitted a story to Pitchwars. And I got in!

With my mentor, we scrapped a lot of the end of the story, reworked it, and now I’ve got a nice clean manuscript. So it was time to query again. Yuck.

Here’s the funny thing. If you’d told me two years ago I’d have eight books published with more on the way, I’d wonder why in the world I would ever, ever start begging agents to like me again. Yet here I am, begging. And unfortunately I’m not having much success.

And the weirdest part? I can’t decide whether I care or not. Really. 

We all dream of success. Maybe not bestsellers but at least getting distribution, right? Seeing your book on shelves, in classrooms, discussed by strangers. But what about the real stuff? I remember telling myself so many times, that if I get my book published, that’s it. It’s all I want.

So that’s what I’m trying to figure out now. I really, really like indie publishing. I love the freedom, the community feel to it, the support. But I’m also feeling a bit burned out, to the point of why even write it because the marketing is so exhausting. 

I still get ideas, still have unfinished books and books without a home. I still want them to get out to the world. But the agent search? All the preying on authors to buy this service or that service? I'm not so sure anymore.