I chose to self-publish in 2015. I’d spent nearly seven months querying agents, rewriting query letters, researching more agents, sending more queries. I ended up sending out nearly two thousand query letters in those seven months. It was frustrating. It was time consuming.
After receiving a few hundred silent no’s, and only three responses, I felt discouraged. But, it wasn’t the lack of response that discouraged me.
All three of the responses I received, asked to read the first few chapters or so many words. After a few days, each of them sent me a response saying something along the lines of “Thank you, your story is great, I like it, I just can’t represent it.”
Why?
No real reason. Each agent, when asked, told me not to change anything, leave the story just as it is. They just didn’t want it.
This was when I realized just how subjective the traditional publishing industry is, but at this point, I still hadn’t decided to self-published.
I made the decision to self-publish by pure fate.
I went into work early in the morning to cover someone else’s shift. A man and his wife had gotten a flat tire on their way home from a casino that night, and had ended up in the tire center at the local Walmart, where I happened to work.
As me and the man started talking, he informed me that he was an author. A self-published author. After a bad experience with a publishing company who went bankrupt, he had to sue them for the rights to his own book.
He told me more about his process, his success, and how he was making a decent income, having his books purchased all over the world. We wrote in completely different genres, but he convinced me that self-publishing was what I needed to do.
So, I might never have self-published had that man not had a flat tire on the one and only morning shift I ever worked at that Walmart.
I am not a millionaire, and I am not a best-selling author, yet. I still have that “best-seller” dream mindset. I’ve had a lot of struggles with self-publishing, most of them completely money related, and I’ve yet to have major success.
But, I don’t regret one minute of it.
My first two books completely tanked. And that’s okay.
My third book had mediocre success, and my novella never even got off the ground.
That’s okay too.
Because I’m learning. I’m making mistakes, and falling down, but I know I’ll be able to pick myself up again.
Thanks for the encouragement! I have also thought about self publishing (when I finally have something to publish that is). So glad you met the man and he gave you this advice.