Fair enough. Money and celebrity – or lack of – seem to be the benchmarks for success in modern culture, so let’s assume the masses know something I don’t.

So what if you can’t make it through that process, and you’re stuck without an agent? Would you keep trying for a year? Of course. How about 10 years? Maybe. How about your whole life? What if the inability to get a deal on your first book is mentally holding you back from writing your second? Would you blow your entire career waiting for someone to give you a chance?

Or would you try something else?

The Past

I submitted Make a Move to 5 agents and publishers. These were people/companies who’d expressed a taste for the kind of work my book vaguely falls into, so I thought they’d be worth a try. As I’ve said before, Make a Move is a hard sell, and I targeted people I thought would give it more than the cursory look it needs to understand why it exists. I got stock rejections from all but one of them. I was ok with that, as I’d prepared myself for that rejection, but I admit I was disappointed. A bit.

About that time, people were arriving in my life who helped me break out of that linear mindset, and stimulated me to look at other options. Readjust my perspective. Break out of the box. I recalibrated my definition of success and what my goals were in getting Make a Move out. I looked at the money in my bank account, decided that having more of it wasn’t going to make me any happier, and thought hard about what I needed from my writing. I needed connections. Ideas. Human interaction. Life.

And all of those things were there for the taking, without needing a single nod of approval from anyone in “the process”.

It’s been two months since I released Make a Move, and in that time I’ve met more cool people than I have in the previous two years. I’ve created relationships. I’ve given people ideas. I’ve changed.

The Present

I received some comments today that implied that I’m nothing more than a vanity publisher, and that my book, by definition, must bite. It’s not the first time. What was scary to witness though, was that the negativity was aimed at myself, and another writer, who have both put out work online for free download, and who are both “out there”, and that it originated from a number of unpublished, unrepresented, unfinished writers. It’s the internet, and we all know the joke about arguing on the internet, so I left it, withdrew with my honour intact, and thought about what I’d learned. And what I learned is this:

People need the validation the system gives them, as they’re too scared to say “my work is good enough to sell”. They cling to that system, even when it steals their productive years from them. Sure, the system keeps mediocre or even terrible books off the shelves, but there are more good writers than there are publishing slots, so good writers – good people – are going to be left behind.

The Future

I’m not turning my back on the system – I’d love to land a deal with a reputable publisher who could get me into the big retailers – but I’m not waiting around either. I’ll send some more submissions once I have time, but I know that establishing a readership is probably the only way I’ll find someone willing to give Make a Move a read with a view to taking it on. A lot of people dedicated to the process would call that arrogant; I call it self-aware. A lot of people would say I’ve given up; I say I’ve opened myself up to possibilities.

I’ve been thinking for some time that I’m too tuned-in to the internet and the ideas and opinions of its denizens, and today confirmed that. I’ve found a few good people online whose opinions I know I can trust, but aside from them, I’m going to tune out the noise . Take a step back and focus. Enjoy this new clarity.

I’m going to go non-linear for a while.

So far so good.

One indie publisher I queried seemed particularly well-thought-of, having won awards for their trade, and were advertising a willingness to view work of the type I was sending, so I had high hopes that this might be “The One”. I was reminded of that submission a couple of days ago when I received an email advertising their print-on-demand service, the second (or third?) I’ve received from them. Their service is actually a bit more than print on demand, as they’re offering to pick up top-selling POD titles with a “traditional” contract, so they’re effectively asking you to pay some money, do all of their marketing, promotion and market research for them, and they’ll step in at the last moment to pick up a sure-fire hit. Good business for them, but not for me, so I passed.

Thing is, this is the only communication I received following my submission about nine months ago. I didn’t even get a rejection letter.

If I was feeling charitable, I’d suggest a slip on their part that is not the normal way they treat people, but I’m not feeling charitable today, so I can only see it as a marketing ploy of questionable ethics. They offer a potential publishing opportunity, attract a market of writers keen to get published in an increasingly impenetrable industry, and make it as easy as possible for you to give them your email address for their direct marketing. That first advertising email from them shattered a few illusions I had, and I felt thoroughly let down, to the point that I’ve only now felt able to write about it dispassionately.

One other publisher failed to respond, but they’re much bigger and, to be honest, it’s easier to dismiss if you’re expecting it, but that’s kind of the point of this post. Email is easy and free, and that perceived lack of value impacts on how people behave in response to it. If you send a paper submission with return postage, the recipient is compelled to respond, but with email, it hasn’t cost you anything, so people find it easier to let their manners slip.

I wrote before about how the perception of poor quality in one self-published book affects all self-publishing writers negatively, and I don’t want to reinforce negative preconceptions about independent publishers and small presses by suggesting this behaviour is commonplace. It isn’t, and most indies are far more open and engaged than their larger, traditional counterparts, and should be a valid, if not preferred, target for your submissions. Just take care, do your research, and don’t be surprised if your eSubmission fails to find its way back to you.

And, no, I’m not naming names.

The Reasons

The following reasons are not stating why you should self-publish; they’re just why I did.

• Make a Move is a VERY difficult pitch, which means it’s hard for an agent to work out how to sell it to publishers, and it’s hard for publishers to work out how to sell it to customers. Try this on for size: it’s a thriller populated by slackers, it’s about spies, but there’s little-to-no spycraft; it’s set in a porno cinema, but it’s not smutty, and the narrative structure is stolen from a sit-com. Would you pick it up for publication? Explaining the book takes time, and doesn’t fit into the paragraph or two available on a cover letter, so I decided to get the book out there, so it might find readers with the time to explore and understand it, who could then pass that knowledge on, and eventually word might reach an agent or editor looking for something different. Of course, editors aren’t looking for something different, they’re looking for something “original”, which I guess means different things to different people, but publishing is in flux right now, and who knows what opportunities that could create.
• Even if I could get a book deal, it wouldn’t pay very much. I’ve read the figures and I know the chances of getting a bestseller and being able to write full-time. Looking at it pragmatically, it ain’t gonna happen. I enjoy my day-job and it pays well, so if I’m not trying to get the book published for money, why give up the rights and control when I can do this myself? A lot of the process of self-publishing is hard work, but there’s a lot of fun to be had too. And I don’t need a publisher to arrange the fun stuff, such as networking and promotion. I’ve met some cool people in Manchester since I started this process, and while I’m in control, there’s no reason that can’t continue. As long as I’m chasing fun and not money, I can’t go wrong.
• Make a Move is the first in a series of 3-or-so books, and that series is dead while the first instalment is stagnating on my hard disk. I NEEDED to get the book out. I’ve nearly sold out the first print run, which means I’ll soon have 100 readers. Then I’ll have 200 (my target). Then I’ll have 1000 (my dream). That’s impetus enough to keep writing these characters, and that’s really all this is about. Me, Freddy, Jay and Holly, seeing how far we can take this.

So that’s honestly why I made this choice. You should make it for different reasons, as it’s your time and money you’re investing, and those reasons have to sustain you when times get hard. And they will get hard. But as long as you’re doing it for reasons that are right for you, there’ll be easy, fun, fulfilling, creative times too.

I asked my friend, Mark, who knows more about books than everyone else I know put together, what font he’d like to see. His response: as long as I can read it and it’s not Comic Sans, who cares? That left me with plenty of choice.

Due to my setup, I needed a font that I had on both Windows and Apple machines. I looked at Garamond, Book Antiqua, Georgia, Palatino Linotype – all common, but perfectly serviceable fonts, and not boring, generic, overused Times New Roman. With the subtle differences from that most ubiquitous of typefaces, I had plenty of fonts from which to choose. I couldn’t lose.

Yeah I could.

Late in the book, I introduced some characters crucial to the story. Characters from Latvia, with Latvian names. And of course, I wanted to show off a bit and choose names with some of the curious accents common in the Latvian language. I set myself a short timescale to finish the print-ready files to send to my printer, as I knew I needed that pressure to stop me from picking over every detail a hundred times and just get it done, so when I found the Latvian names at the end of the book filled with black rectangles – indicating that those characters were unavailable in the selected font – I didn’t have much time to fix the problem. I didn’t want to go back to the research and choose new names – these characters were alive in the book now, and their names had stuck – so I ran through my list of suitable fonts, desperate to find one with support for those crazy accents.

Of course, there was only one serif font on both systems with the character support. Times New Fricking Roman.

The book text looks good – looks great in fact – but I’m a control freak and I wanted my choice of fonts. When you’ve committed to managing every tiny detail yourself, things like this are important. Hell, every detail is important.

So the moral of the story? Keep things simple and don’t show off; it’s the little things that’ll come back and bite you in the ass.

I’m going to do something utterly pretentious; I’m going to quote from my book.

“You can’t make things better or worse, just different. Make a move. See what happens.”

When I first wrote that, I was trying to encapsulate a character’s attitude to finding himself in a bad place, but it’s become something of a mantra for me since. As I write, I’m waiting on the jacket proof for a small (100) run of hardbacks I’ve ordered, and even now, it’s hard to remember the point at which I decided to print the book myself. I know I’d pretty much given up on the idea of getting a book deal in the current market (Make a Move is NOT supermarket-friendly) and wanted to do something while I wait for the industry to open its doors to new writers again, so I did the maths, found the cash, the technical knowledge and the friends to help, and I placed the order. My break-even point is comfortable, and I’ve got a lot of pre-orders.

But what if it all goes wrong? Well, so what if it does go wrong? Completely wrong. I’m out a few hundred quid, I’ve got a couple of boxes of books to pulp/store and I’ve got a bruised ego to salve. But does it really matter?

No. My biggest obstacle right now – that the publishing industry knows nothing of my book – is also my safety net. I can’t damage my reputation with this project, only enhance it. Even if the run sells out and I reprint, no one in publishing will care. It doesn’t matter. My only goals are to get my book out to people and have some fun doing it, maybe meet some new people and learn something. I can achieve all of those goals whether the project succeeds or not, and I love no-lose situations.

You don’t have to become a print publisher to get your work out there – although I’ll be writing about my experiences and findings to help you if that’s the path you choose. There are many paths available now, and if you’re prepared to do the work, and have modest ambitions, you can achieve success. And if you find a path isn’t taking you where you thought, choose a different one.

What’s the worst that could happen?