Join me on my road to publication (part 5)

My multipart series chronicles the ups and downs of an ordinary person striving to becoming a novelist in the real world. The series will span more than five decades.

If you’ve read parts 1-4, you can skip the intro (though it’s a fascinating intro 😀):

I’m the author of ten published novels, three novellas, and one nonfiction book. Seven of the novels, the three novellas, and the nonfiction book were traditionally published. I self-published the remaining three novels.

Though this might seem impressive to some, it goes without saying that I’m no Stephen King, especially when it comes to our respective bank accounts. Despite boasting over 50,000 purchases/downloads of my books, I’ve barely broken into five figures in cash royalties because (admittedly) most of the sales were free or inexpensive ebooks. Regardless, it’s likely there are authors who would trade places with me, which might be viewed as a depressing commentary on how extraordinarily difficult it is for a no-name to hit it big.

Though I’m not the only author on Substack chronicling something like this, my story has unique elements that I believe will be informative and relatable to writers and readers. Over the next several months, I’ll post a bimonthly account of my journey to publication—from the 1970s when I was a young man with big dreams to a recently retired dude who hasn’t given up on those dreams quite yet. Here is part 5.

I begin to form an addiction to a drug called publication

I wrote my first novel in 1979. I wrote my second in 2004. After that, the key was to keep writing novels and not relapse into another decades-long drought.

In 2004, I averaged between 1,500 and 2,500 words a night. This enabled me to complete a 200,000-word first draft in three months. Book 1 of my long-envisioned epic fantasy series had finally become a reality. Up next came the revision process, which (as all writers know) was a mixture of fun and drudgery. It took me another five months to churn through fifteen revisions, which meant eight months all told to finish the polished product.

This was fabulous news! But there were some downsides. For one thing, the next two books weren’t going to write themselves, which meant I had sixteen grueling months (almost 500 days) to go before the series would be finished. But financially, I still had two years left before the threat of homelessness would force me to return to a full-time day job. So I plugged on, day after day, week after week, month after month—rarely missing a single day of either writing or revising—and by the middle of 2007, I had three books (totaling 800,000 words) ready to go. For me, this was no small feat. When I look back on “my road to publication,” writing this series remains my finest hour.

Next up? It was time to find a publisher for these suckers!

And I thought the writing part was tough.

In 2007, self-publishing had begun a slow rise in the opinion polls, but most authors still disdained it. However, discarding this option put writers in a difficult position. Even back then, many publishing houses, especially the big ones, only accepted submissions from authors represented by agents, and getting an agent was no gimme—especially a proven New York-based agent with legitimate connections. If a writer got lucky enough to land a respected agent, he or she had a 50-50 chance of publication. But that meant 50 percent of authors with a strong agent still wouldn’t get published. That’s better odds than zero percent, but …

Damn !

It didn’t help my situation that the economy went totally wonky in 2007, with the publishing industry taking an especially hard hit. The slots for no-name authors shrunk from maybe one in a hundred to one in a thousand.

Double-damn !

Anyway, if you couldn’t acquire an agent, your other option was to send your work to midsized and small presses that accepted unagented submissions. This sometimes paid off, but even if it did, it was by no means a guarantee you’d become a best-seller. With smaller presses, especially, you might only sell a few hundred books, but at least all the costs involved—editing, cover and interior design, ISBNs, base-level marketing—were covered by the publisher. And you got to ( magical cliche alert! ) open the box that arrived in the mail and hold the book lovingly in your hands. wooooHOOOO. Your life was complete!

Uh huh. Suuuuuuure.

Meanwhile, I became a member of an online writers group that was bloated with thousands of writers whining (rightfully so) about how difficult it was to get published. Luckily, I formed an online friendship with a fellow fantasy author named Chris Stevenson. Over the years, Chris has been published multiple times by multiple publishers, but like almost all the rest of us, his successes haven’t turned him into a millionaire, yet.

Lucky for me, Chris was the generous type who spent as much time helping others as he did himself—and in late 2006, he introduced me to a new but rising agent who was looking for authors who wrote epic fantasy. The timing was perfect! The agent and I spoke on the phone a couple of times and hit it off. Soon after, I signed a contract with him. We decided to market the series as six average-length books instead of three humongous ones. We also came up with the title The Death Wizard Chronicles. We were ready to rock and roll.

As you might imagine, I was over-the-top excited. Surely, my agent would call me with great news from one of the major houses within a few hours! I brought my phone with me wherever I went to make sure I didn’t miss the life-altering call. To this day, my wife and I still talk about me carrying my phone on hikes in the forest. When the phone did ring, I jumped out of my skin. But it was never my agent. And the unlucky soul who actually was calling me couldn’t help but hear the tsunami-like surge of disappointment in my voice. There are probably people still in therapy over it.

How naive I was!!!

Even with an agent, it took months—not days—to hear back from major publishers. It wasn’t until late 2007—about a year after I first signed with the agent—that the rejections began to roll in. The NO’S included Penguin, Simon and Schuster, Hatchette, Orbit, Orion, Voyager, Baen, DAW, Edge … well, you get the picture. Though there were a couple of nibbles, the rejections won the day in a rout. By 2009, I still hadn't received an offer. My agent was willing to keep trying, but he had run out of places to go. Eventually, we amicably agreed to call it quits between us.

The books I had dreamed about writing for twenty-five years were finished. And they were great! Perhaps the greatest books ever written!!!

(IMO)

But my journey to publication was on a fast track to failure. And now, I no longer even had an agent, much less a publisher.

I was back to square one.

Or more accurately, square negative one.

Up next: Mistakes were made.

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Previous episodes

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4