“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.” ~ Mark Twain.
You won’t make millions overnight
I’ve been writing for twelve years. Literally, twelve years. And I finally just released my first young adult sci-fi/fantasy series. Why did it take so long? Because the same nagging thought ran through my mind over and over again… “I’m no author”.
I went to college for marketing and advertising thinking that I would work in corporate America after I graduated and then climb the corporate ladder. That turned out to be an enormous joke. Corporate America is just another food for fodder that I am beginning to write a separate book about, but I digress right now. I had many ideas running through my head day after day, as I day dreamed in the middle of boring pointless meetings about nothing. I finally decided one day that it was time to take action.
I first had to accept the fact that I was not going to become an author overnight, and I was not going to make millions of dollars after it became published – oops – I mean WHEN it became published… oh sorry, I mean IF it became published! But that is what I had to accept. I knew once I started writing, that I needed to just write a story for myself and “hopefully” one day I’ll get at least recognized.
You probably feel frustration and defeat
I doubted everything about it. Should I bother? What’s the point? Do I have a story here? Would others want to read this? This is too much work. I’m not an author. On and on, year after year the questions flooded my head whether or not to keep writing.
I had too many ideas, too many visions of story scenes running through my head. Eventually the story was finished and then the hardest task soon followed, which was to get a publisher to accept my submission. That alone took another several years. But you just keep at it. You just keep pushing. I knew that I had a great story, and I knew that eventually someone would recognize that.
So, if you are reading this, then that means you probably feel (or felt) the same way. But more importantly, it also means, that you are doing your homework and that you are serious. That’s good! That is how to get started.
Just research, research, research
However, if I can offer a quick piece of advice - don’t stop here. Keep researching and researching and researching. You see, the key to the whole process, is to truly know what you are getting yourself into, and what is involved.
Vanity Press versus Independent Publishers, Self-publishing, Traditional publishers… oh my!
Oh my, is right. What is what and where do you turn? Well, to start, make sure you completely understand the difference between them all and begin to learn the terminology. Some terminology is being used interchangeably or worse, incorrectly. The other heartbreaking downfall, is the thousands upon thousands of forums, blogs, tweets and other social media that steers you to follow one path versus the other.
Here is the best advice I can offer – The choice is yours. Period. There is no black and white, right way versus a wrong way.
I myself took the route of Independent Publishing. That choice was not made lightly by any means, but, it was the best next step that I could take, aside from Traditional publishing. Because with traditional publishing – comes literary agents. And with literary agents, comes experience, and a solid foundation of writing.
Choose wisely
Here are a few good places to start. There are hundreds… no thousands of articles, blogs, forums and websites to help you decipher the language of the publishing world, but these links were some of the ones that I found to just be helpful and informative to get me started.
If you are like me, and you are just getting started, then you have neither the experience nor the foundation to back your writing. And although you “don’t need it” as they say… it certainly doesn’t hurt. I tried for many years to follow the path of traditional publishing, but that is one seriously hard wall to break through. So I realized finally, that I needed to take baby steps, and so I chose to work with an Independent Publisher. I mean, this was the path that Mark Twain took after all, so there must be some merit to it.
The Bottom line
If you want to become an author and take your passion for writing to the next level as I did, make sure you know what you are getting into. Research heavily as to whether or not you would like to enlist an agent and work with the traditional publishers, or following the path of working with an independent publisher. Either way, the choice is yours.
Written by: the author of Draconeum, and the Orb of Light
www.draconeum.weebly.com
enjoyed reading your interesting article
keep writing!!
I haven't been faced with your concerns. I spent my entire life writing (mostly for my work--nonfiction) and often publishing in refereed journals. Came close to writing textbooks several times but never did. I didn't have time to write creatively until 19 years ago when I started writing weekly poems for my website. For example, during my doctoral studies in the early 1970s I learned that the great BF Skinner couldn't get his ideas on behaviorism published so he had to go to a vanity press to publish his first book. Many famous authors have written and published for 20 years before becoming "famous" and started earning any real money other than the junk writing jobs they took to put food on the table.
Writing should be fun. Some places like Amazon and Authorsden have made it possible to epublish at little or no cost. However, I wouldn't recommend flooding the literary world with junk writing. It does serious authors a disservice.
Ron