Tag: agent

Slow motion…

~ Meg

How slowly time moves when you are waiting…

In the last few months of concentrating on novel writing/editing/revising, I have also been trying to educate myself on the best way to attract the attention of an agent. In that regard, I have re-subscribed to Writer’s Digest (after having let it lapse) and taken advantage of a couple of the webinars they offered on the subject. Along with the price of the webinar, the participants were guaranteed answers to all of their submitted questions and feedback on the first five pages of our manuscripts from the agents moderating the session. I have submitted the first fives pages of Three Empty Frames to both the agents and now I’m awaiting their response. I also asked the question I had about my self published novels being off the table for submission because of their being previously published. So now I wait… It could be a month or more before I hear back.

Another venue I’ve taken advantage of is a Facebook Writers’ forum I had joined and largely ignored over the last year. I posed my question about self publishing and got several less than encouraging responses. Most everyone agrees that self published books are unacceptable to agents for query. The self published authors that have moved to the traditional publishing world have done so mostly after being discovered BECAUSE their self published work was already successful.

Another ‘lovely’ discovery I had thrown in my face is this: just because you get an agent doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for self promotion. To summarize: authors are expected to do their own marketing whether or not they have an agent. So the days of writers just working on their next book while their marketing team does all their publicity are gone. (Of course everything changes when you are a best seller, but until then…) My desire is to write, to direct my energy and creativity into crafting stories. To be a success at it seems to mean diverting some of that energy into crafting a marketing strategy. I’m trying to work out how I feel about that.

And speaking of feelings… Honestly, I have been all over the place mentally/emotionally with all the uncertainty of publishing/self publishing. Some days I am optimistic and determined and other days I am ready to throw in the towel. If one learns the best by learning from making mistakes then I should be the valedictorian of my class.

 

The First Novel – A new direction

~ Meg

It has been a tumultuous couple of months. Despite some upsets, much good has come of them. Taking a break from blogging made me realize how much effort and time I had been devoting to thinking up new material to post about. I have been distracted from my primary goal: writing and publishing novels.

In redirecting my efforts, I realized I almost need to start over in this process. Four of my novels in The Bucks County Series are published on Amazon. The fifth is in the hands of my beta readers —that one can sit on the back burner for the time being. So far self publishing has proven to be less than successful. Why? Because all the marketing and promotion fall back on the author. I have neither the time or the stomach for it.

And that is how I fell into the trap of blogging on nearly a daily basis. I love writing —that is what I want to do. I was telling myself that a popular blog would help me to promote my books. That hasn’t happened. Granted, I’m also not hitting the reader in the face with book promotion every time I write a post. That’s how timid I am about marketing. What I need is someone to do the marketing for me.

Back in early 2015, when I finished my first novel, I tried finding an agent but my fragile ego couldn’t take rejection. After only six tries, I gave up and self published through Amazon. That is not how it works. Many popular and successful authors have been rejected numerous times —sometimes for years before an agent finally agrees to represent them to a publisher. I need to brace myself for this possibility and not let it derail my process.

I also realized that my self published novels need to be the very best they can be. If an agent is even remotely interested in your query and the first five pages you send along with it, they are going to look for you in the cyber world. They will find your Facebook Author Page, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkdIn, and WordPress blog. They will find your Amazon and Goodreads Author Pages. They will see that I have four self published novels. These need to be ready for view —even a brief one.

With that in mind, I have revisited my first novel: Three Empty Frames.  Three Empty Frames_02_HR_front_2In three years since I wrote the first draft of this book, I have learned so much. Fortunately, I feel like the story is strong and it’s just the writing that needs polish. And that is what I have been doing the last couple of months —putting my efforts into making Three Empty Frames ready for an agent. And while I do, I am educating myself on the query process, taking webinars on finding an agent and reading everything I can about how to do this successfully. Hopefully I won’t have to wait years for someone to take a chance.