Monday, January 7, 2013

Back to routines -- thankfully.

I have some decisions to make.

I have three novels more or less ready to publish.  Two are complete.  One needs more work, but will be done in a month or two.

So...do I put them all out at the same time?  Do I roll them out one at a time?  If I roll them out one at a time, which one do I start with, and which one comes second?

I was watching a year old program on publishing on Cspan, and they were saying that out of the MILLION novels published a couple of years ago, 700,000 were ebooks.

So any novel dropped into that ocean will drown.

I'm trending back to perhaps trying to send NEARLY HUMAN off to agents again.  I've decided to hire someone to copy edit it, because I've changed so many names and changed from 1st person to 3rd person, and especially because I feel that there is a book there -- somewhere -- but I don't quite have it.  I guess I'm hoping she'll "fix" it.  I know in the end, it'll be up to me, but there is always that hope.

I'm going to try to use what few connections I have to get some names of agents -- if that doesn't work, I'll pull them off the net.  Next round of efforts, though, will be sending to multiple agents all at the same time.  Based on responses from say 10 or 15 agents, I'll know whether to even bother to proceed.  15 form rejections would pretty much give me the message.  10 form rejections and 5 more forthcoming rejections might be enough to keep me trying. Something like that.

I'm not forming a plan at this point.  Just going with the flow.  Covers will be ready when they're ready, formatting, all that.  Plus getting Nearly Human in shape.

So it will probably be a process all through the month of January just getting ready.

I keep reminding myself that there is no hurry.  The books are done or getting done.

The only danger is that I stay away too long from writing original material.  So I just have to try to schedule that in, somehow.

The vampire story already has a thematic structure -- I know what I want to say.  I have to work out the plot, but I know that it will entail a 'chase' of some kind, which helps with the suspense factor.

I'm thinking I should probably schedule the "new" writing early in each day, see how far it goes, then go back to old writing and work on that.

It'll be nice to have routine to work with, now that the holidays are past.  These next six months should be very productive.

4 comments:

Chris Bakunas said...

I say do not limit yourself to 15 rejections. If you like your work, have someone you trust review it, maybe a couple of people. Then submit, submit, submit. Never stop submitting - why would you? You have done something most writers never do - you've finished a novel! Heck, you've finished two! One of the two has to be better than The Eye of Argon!

Owen said...

Hi Duncan, I think this blog post is really appropriate for what you are writing about in terms of what to do with your books. http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2013/01/08/what-the-hell-one-more/

Duncan McGeary said...

That was terrific.

He's saying he won't write a "book."

I'd have to say though, the reason I write is for the 'story.' The 'story' is the book, not the same thing as communicating on a daily basis on a blog.

Though you could write your story on a blog -- in fact, I've done that once, and I'm thinking I'll do it again.

Owen said...

Yes, and he was also talking about the fact that the publishing world has changed big time. I think you are heading in the write direction (bad pun, ouch) by doing what you did with your recent book published in segments on the blog. Now, how to monetize that - that would be interesting to explore.