The contest has come to an end, but the journey is just beginning

Today, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award announced the 25 semifinalists. Unfortunately, yours truly was not among them. I wish the winners the best of luck - I am sure they are all fine examples of the art, and will see great success.

As for me, I learned a lot during this process. I'm not really upset or irritated that I wasn't selected - on the contrary, I was honestly surprised to have made it as far as I did. Being selected as one of the top 500 entries out of 10,000 submitted is an honor I'm still not certain I'm worthy of, and the forthcoming Publisher's Weekly review - whether it is positive or negative - is simply icing on the cake. The fact that this is my first novel - indeed the first work I've written that is longer than 15,000 words - is just something I am immensely proud of.

Sorry if the previous paragraph sounds like bragging - it's honestly not intended that way. I just never expected to make it as far as I did.

Now, where do we go from here?

Let's talk about a couple things: the things I learned from this contest, and what I plan to do with it.

On Reviews

Firstly, I'll probably keep obsessively refreshing my reviews page in createspace. While my position as a quarter-finalist warrants me a Publisher's Weekly review, it hasn't actually been posted yet. On top of that is the fact that the review is not required to be a good review. There's no such thing as bad press in many cases, but I can't say I'm looking forward to being excoriated by one of the gatekeepers of the publishing world.

That being said, I also earned two reviews from Amazon "expert" reviewers. I mean no disrespect by the quotation marks - I've simply heard them referred to by a number of terms, and I'm unsure what exactly brought them to the rank of expert. There were two, both of which contributed to the decision to move my book onward to the quarterfinals. Both reviewers praised my writing style - one called my writing style "gripping," while the other described the writing as "strong". At that point the two reviews diverged. One claimed that my ability to seamlessly move the viewpoint between the character's internal dialog and the actual events was excellent, while the other said that they found it jarring in places. One said that he disliked my main character based on his word choices, while the other described my main character as "dynamic."

Probably the most troubling part of one review was when one reviewer stated their "disinterest in the science fiction portion of the novel." I have yet to determine if this is due to the reviewer's dislike of science fiction as a genre, or whether I just did not present enough science fiction elements fast enough. If it's the former (which I am led to believe based upon my reading of how the ABNA process works), then I question the system Amazon has put into place for this contest. Maybe it was just a fluke, but it's a disconcerting one.

In either case, I wish I had the opportunity to thank both of my reviewers. I gleaned a lot from the brief reviews they left, and I will apply it to my future writing.

Moving Forward

My conclusion after this contest is that, barring a horrid review from Publisher's Weekly, my book just might be ready for marketing. I've been pondering what to do with my writing for a while now. I have a stable day job that pays very well, so I'm not looking to make a living on my writing just yet. Granted that's one of the end goals - to do what I want, essentially, for a living - but the process I plan on taking isn't necessarily driven by publication as any kind of hard benchmark. If my novel isn't worthy of the world, I have no problem writing another (and another and another) until I get it right. Or until I've saturated the market.

I already have a sequel written for the novel I submitted to this contest - Majestic - as I feel that I had places to take the story that the first novel didn't adequately explore. This novel hasn't been edited (or even read yet), but I already have ideas for others in a different series. Aside from that I've been dabbling in short story and scene writing (which you can see on this blog), just generally building my skills. I look at writing like programming - you can spend hours and days and years tightening the project down, but after a while you just need to get it out the door and move on to something else.

On Self Publishing versus Traditional Publishing

There is endless debate online about self publishing versus traditional publishing, and it ultimately boils down to this: If you self publish, your royalties for each book you sell will be higher on average, but the perception of your quality will be lower, as will your out-of-pocket expense. If you traditionally publish, you get the cachet of the the published author and better publicity, but you run the risk of not earning as much in royalties.

Personally, I see merits in both approaches. Self-publishing gets you feedback and income now, but removes the barriers to entry. There are a lot of bad books out there - poorly edited, poorly thought out, poorly formatted - that people throw up just to be able to say "I'm an author, you can buy my book here." These books bring down the perception of self publishing as a whole, and actively harm the community. Honestly, these books are the single biggest argument against self-publishing for me. Although I need to be honest and admit to myself that there is a good chance that my book also falls into that category.

Traditional publishing, on the other hand, has the gatekeepers. You need to find an agent, who will request edits, who will sell to a publisher, who will request edits, who will print the book and sell to bookstores. Then you need to participate in marketing with variable support from your publisher, who may be loathe to take risks on a neophyte author with no proven sales record. In the end you have your book in a bookstore, but you're taking on a lot of the process than authors have traditionally done in the past.

So which is important to me - getting it out there, or getting the respect?

My Approach

My primary consideration is that  I recognize that I'm trying to build a brand. After a while, if no one has heard of me, no one will buy my books if I ever end up published. So here's my naive plan to get the ball rolling:

1. Start the query process. Get my book out and in front of agents, and see if I can get one to bite.
2. After twelve months, if I have not received any substantive indicator of progress, pursue the self-publishing route.

This is the plan I start today, with my first official query later this evening. I've a number of reasons for choosing this approach, but they can be summarized as follows:

• Some writers see romanticism in amassing years worth of rejections before finally getting that one "yes" they need. I don't really see the point in this, myself.
• In some ways, being proliferate can trump being unknown. Having things out and selling builds my name, and builds evidence behind me that I have something of worth to offer the reading world.
• Ultimately, I'm writing for myself. If other people think my books are publication worthy, that's great! However, I don't plan on truly defining my success as a writer on my publication status. As such, I'm not really in the mood to beat my head against a brick wall, hoping I break my way through after enough strikes.

So what do you think? Am I making a good choice, or taking the first steps down the path of folly?

Exciting news, everyone!

(and that's enough of Professor Farnsworth for now)

The quarter-finalists for the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award have been announced, and my book - Marvelous - has made the cut!

This is the first work of any significant length I have ever written, and to see it selected as such is... oddly fulfilling. A year ago I didn't do all that much writing, but after Camp NaNoWriMo in June of last year it's become a much larger part of my life. I always kind of wanted to write a novel, but never really found the time until I sat down and forced myself to write, every day, for a month. The result is something that I was pretty pleased with, and apparently some other people like it too!

You can find the excerpt at amazon.com - if you've enjoyed the stories I've posted here so far, or even if you just like a good tale, please take a look through my excerpt and give it a review :)

Progress galore, and where I'm planning on going

So I have some good news to report, and something aside from a theme story to post. As of 2-26-13, the first draft of Majestic - a sequel to my novel Marvelous - has been completed! 52,000 words over 26 days - that's a rate of just around 2,000 a day (the word count is approximate). Obviously some days were less, and some more - for the first couple weeks I average 4k per day on business days. I usually write on the train, when I'm not teaching classes online, and I find that the built-in three hours a day I spend commuting really gives me time to pump out some words - if I can make myself write, that is. For now, I'm going to let it sit on the back burner while I unwind. Well, that and actually read it. I know a couple people who have been bugging me to get a look at it.

Of course, the interesting thing for me was that Marvelous hasn't even been published yet, and here I am writing a sequel. It seems to me that this would make the success of the second book inextricably tied up with that of the first. That's really had me thinking a lot about what I want to do with these books. There are two real options available, it seems - traditional publishing, and self publishing.

Traditional publishing, like it or not, provides an author with the reputation of a published writer. Someone else has purchased the work, vetted it, and put it on sale. My original goal with writing was really just to see what came of it, and ultimately see if my skills are "good enough" for the world at large. A traditional publisher does this through a clearly defined path, and though the royalties for all but the top dozen or so authors are not as great as you'd think, it can still provide a steady income as a second job.

Self publishing is kind of an end run around traditional publishers. There are other bloggers (such as J.A. Konrath and Chuck Wendig) who have delved into the numbers and come up on the side of self-publishing. And they do very well for themselves. However, taking a look at the community as a whole you get a sense that while indeed there is a wide variety of motivations among people who choose to self publish, there are still just a few primary motivations. Some people self-publish because they have enough of a name where it makes them more money with the higher royalty agreements you see for self-published ebooks. Others self-publish because they feel like their work was cast aside prematurely by the traditional publishing world, and that if they got it in front of customers it would take off. But perceptions of both classes are impacted by the overall stigma of self-publishing, and they aren't helped by the simple fact that there are a lot of very bad self-published books out there.

Which, as my rambling winds down, brings me back to what I was originally trying to write about - what I'm going to do with the book. Marvelous is tied up in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for the moment, until I get definitive feedback and earn an exit from the contest. I'm trying not to be too optimistic about my chances, but based on the agreement I signed when I submitted I need to let the contest run its course. At that point I will start submitting to agents. As a new author I have no cachet and no name recognition, meaning I'll end up in a lot of slush piles. However, I really don't intend to do this forever. I have a busy day job and a part time job that also eats up a not-inconsiderate amount of time, and honestly after a while I'll just be beating a dead horse. So my current plan is to try and obtain representation for a year - until June, 2014 - at which point if I have seen no progress I'll self publish the duology as ebooks.

Of course if I meet success or feel overall better about the submission process as I go through it I may make alterations to this approach, but this is my current plan. Hopefully by the time next June comes around I'll have a couple more books under my belt (I have some ideas on the back burner that I'm starting to flesh out).

Have any of you written a novel and had it published, traditionally or otherwise? What are your thoughts?

An update - Of Progress and Performance

So for those of you who don't know me very well, I've only been taking my writing seriously for about 8 months now. Prior to June of last year, I hadn't done any serious writing of any kind since the philosophy papers I wrote in college. Of course I have not published anything yet, so I can't really be considered a "professional writer" or anything along those lines, but the point that since that time I've written close to 100,000 words in various formats should not be ignored.

I suppose I never really explained the purpose of this blog. My original goal was to simply offer up stories I've been writing as a form of entertainment to the reader, as well as - gasp - do some advertising and lay the foundations for any future books I may publish. Most of my posts, accordingly, are short stories I've written and progress reports. I may branch out as time goes on (actually, there's no "may" about it given how much time I spend reading other blogs like that of Chuck Wendig (terribleminds.com)).

This post is definitely in the "progress report" category.

Today, my first book - Marvelous - was accepted into the second round of Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award competition.

To say I'm happy would be an understatement. I wrote Marvelous on a whim, in 30 days, because my sister (Jennifer Young, a fantastic writer) challenged me to a word duel. I won, but that's beside the point. My first real effort (minus some intense editing and headaches) was selected as part of the top 20% of all entrants. It's empowering and exciting, as well as terrifying all at the same time. The first round was on my blurb. The next, though, is on my writing.

Anyway, on a different note, I hit 26k words on Majestic this morning. The story is humming along, and I'm getting to a phase where I'm finding it a bit of a challenge to focus on the writing. The same thing happened to me with Marvelous the first time around. I'm pushing through, but my pace has definitely decreased from the 4k words per day I was putting up last week. Of course, the fact that I'm working extra hours at work may play into that.

Anyway, the quick summary: It's all good here, for now!