If you'd like to join up at AW, you can find me under the exceptionally non-creative handle "mpclemens" Like any Internet forum, there are strong personalities, meandering conversations, the occasional flamewar breakout, and other digressions. There's also excellent sources of information like this FAQ on agents, representation, and getting published in the trades, which has been something of a cold, wet washcloth of reality applied to my pride. This is not a bad thing.
In all, I see Quest as a baby step: whether it will lead to other things, and how high I can potentially climb is up to me.
And Duffy, if it weren't for you, I wouldn't have gotten suckered into finding a typewriter for NaNoWriMo, which led me to Strikethru and Fresh Ribbon, and the Brigade, and so on. In short, it's all your fault.
Typed on a Remington Monarch
4 comments:
Thanks for sharing your experience in publishing. Years ago, I had hoped to make a living with a camera and words. Digital photography came along and bumped me further up the curve along with many, many other photographers openly sharing their work on the Internet.
As for my current creative pursuits, there is the blog, junk robots in various states of completion and a whole bunch of photos I need to load on my Fotki site. Work is as creative as standards and policy can be.
As someone who is looking to self publish in the not too distant future I've been following your exploits closely. I must say that I have not been swayed away from the idea. Obviously that wasn't your aim but there is something so funfilling (?) in seeing one's name on the cover of an actual book. Yes, the landscape of "traditional" publishing is changing and I don't like the way it going. No one asked me but I don't. It isn't the quality (though it is taking a dip) but rather the push to ebooks. I have an iPad (I'm typing on it now) and a nook but I will never give up my paper. There is something about staring a screen that makes our digitally conditioned brains to dial the neurons back a few notches and just not expect as much in the way of quality or output as we would from paper.
Then again I've never had a book published. So who am I to say? ;u)
I've told Mike about his already, but I found an even better forum in Book Country, and all the members admit that it's a god send for writers. The catch, it's only for genre writers: i.e. fantasy, mystery, science fiction, and romance. They also have a self publishing tool that is one of the greatest deals that I've seen. So far I can not complain, and I've been a member for over a year. Three people have been picked up by real agents and publishers this year, so I know it gets good traffic. Seriously, join me! I'm under my name as well.
Currently I'm writing a novel, and have yet to decide if I want to query for an agent, or self publish. I'll decide when I'm done.
a pretty sane post, methinks. The landscape is changing, but trad/mainstream publishing is still as solid as ever, for many reasons. A lot is going on (oh, like the web in general), but there is also much reason for optimism even among the hobbyists like us. rino
Post a Comment