January 26th, 2024
As I am writing this, I am supervising a ninth grade English class and watching two students paint their nails at their desks. These are our future leaders, folks.
...okay, okay, it is the last day of the semester, so I’ll give them a break. No sense starting a confrontation when I’ve got a blog post to write!
Today’s update is to let you know where I’m currently at in my publishing journey. The short answer is: the very beginning. After over a year, maybe even two years, of querying literary agents and trying to go the traditional route, I finally threw in the towel. For anyone who’s not familiar with the business, it is notoriously difficult to get the attention of an agent or publisher as a first-time author. Kindly observe a moment of silence for all my manuscripts sitting at the bottoms of slush piles, melting away into obscurity. RIP.
But all is not lost! I have decided to self-publish, and I am lucky to have a good friend who works in the industry and has taken me on as a client. There are pros and cons to self-publishing, which I might discuss in more depth in another post. For now, suffice to say that the main barrier to self-publishing is the cost. Even for the bare minimum, you’re still looking at a few thousand dollars. As a humble high school teacher, this was rather daunting for me. However, I was able to crowdfund a good chunk of change. I am eternally grateful to all who donated to my campaign. If you’re curious or are thinking of doing your own crowdfunding and need an example, you can check out my Kickstarter page here:
My crowdfunding campaign closed on January 18th (just over a week ago), and I’m currently awaiting the funds to be collected by Kickstarter and deposited into my account. This process is supposed to take 2-4 weeks. In the meantime, I have paid a 10% deposit to FriesenPress to secure a limited-time discount on editing services. I have submitted my manuscript to them and filled out a detailed questionnaire about my book, target audience, my goals for the book, etc. Once I have received my Kickstarter funds, I will pay more money to FriesenPress and then they will begin production on my book. The first step is to have an editor review my manuscript and suggest which type(s) of editing will be needed (copy editing, content editing, developmental editing, etc.).
Annnnd that’s it. Perhaps a bit anticlimactic, but like I said, I’m at the very beginning of the process. I will continue to post updates as they occur. If you have any questions or would like to share your experiences or wisdom with regards to publishing, please leave a comment! Or just say hi 😀
Just wanted to say that I look forward to following you on this journey. As a young person, I had great dreams of seeing a book I had written out there in the world but...