Last week my sister Mary won a book in a raffle. It's a self-published book by an as-yet unknown author, who is hoping to catch on in the current craze for teenaged paranormal romance. It is doubtful that this author ever wrote before, and even if she did, no one ever gave her any guidance, and instruction even in the basics of grammar and mechanics. The prose is choppy, stilted and forced, stuffed to bursting with adjectives and adverbs, and sprinkled lavishly with misplaced punctuation. The spelling is bad, and the author's grasp of homonyms is shaky at best. There is nothing subtle in any of the story; every motion, every word spoken, is accompanied by some descriptive word or phrase.
It is bad - just BAD. We took turns reading selected passages aloud around the table and roaring with laughter, sometimes unable to finish reading a single sentence without cackling. Dad read a few lines and screwed his face up as if he had just taken a mouthful of sour milk.
On Monday, Mary called me and told me that she had learned that this writer, who doesn't know "to" from "too", has landed a publishing deal, and is doing to have her work, such as it is, distributed through Barnes & Noble.
This new almost caused me physical pain. How can this be? How can this nearly unlettered amateur find herself on the verge of nationwide distribution? How can any publisher read even one paragraph and not know that it is poisonous drek? Is it because it has brooding, lusty teenaged vampires, demons, ghosts and other half-baked things in it? Is it because the female lead, who of course sleeps with the brooding, lusty teenaged vampire before the book is half over, is in a perpetual state of danger, and must be rescued?
It seems very unfair, besides just being stupid, that such terrible writing should be accepted as marketable, when mine languishes. I cannot complain too loudly, because one this that unlettered author has done that I have not is, she went ahead and got her writing out there. She published that book (and several others in a series, I understand, to my aesthetic anguish) herself, and promoted it, and got it into people's hands... even if it ended up causing great hilarity around the table. My writing languishes becuase it's all still in file drawers and on CDs and in binders on my shelves, and almost no one outside the family has read any of it.
That has to change, and I have to be the one to cause the change, because no one will take pity on me. Though I know my writing is good, that and a buck will buy me a cup of coffee. I know it's good; I have to show others it's good.
So which one do I send out first into the wild, cold, unforgiving world? Come to Dust? Jag? Miller? The Rathin series? How do I tackle the alien-to-me world of self-promotion and marketing? I really dislike Facebook, but that's the way the world works now. Do I go to the Shires Press in Manchester and print it myself with the Espresso Book Machine? Do I e-publish, and if so, how? Do I blog, tweet, or what? I am totally at sea.... and wish I could find someone into whose capable hands I could dump all this promotional jibberjabber, and just sit back and write, and leave the dirty work to someone who will do it for free...because even if I do get published, again, that and a buck will buy me a cup of coffee. I can't afford to pay someone to do my marketing for me, so once again, I have to do it myself.
I have read that a writer's website needs things like a "press page" and testimonials and credits and lists of published works and awards and contests the writer has won.... but I don't have any of that. I think my one publishing credit (outside of our 9th-rate lit mag in college) is a short, sentimental story I had published in a local paper in 1986. I haven't published anything, though I have written thousands and thousands of pages, in the form of several drafts of several novels.
I don't know where to start...
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