[brinley hook]

After searching the Internet I have come up with the impression that getting a novel published for the first time appears to be a younger person's game. 59 years, one major heart attack, and four stents later, each moment here is precious and precarious. So? So I'm not sure I have the time to do what is traditionally recommended to get a novel published, which is send a manuscript to a publishing house, which could take 6 months plus, then send it to the next one for 6 months if the first publisher declines it, etc, etc.

So then I thought, hummmm, what if I go the E-book route, but that is supposed to to yield very few successes.

There's always the make contacts at conventions method, but that could take years.

After writing more top 10 music hits than I have fingers and toes, I have learned one thing about life ..... the only thing that is stopping you, is you! I am not about to accept failure and have never been a quitter. Shoot, I had heart surgery last Wednesday at 11 a.m. and was in the pub that I own drinking one at 6 p.m., so if heart surgery isn't going to stop me, neither is this.

However ....... I am just a wee bit lost on this publishing business, so I am asking for help, for ideas on how to speed up the process.

To the owners and moderator of this forum - I own a youth basketball discussion board, so I totally appreciate your no self promoting policies. I hope my request does not break any of your rules. I am simply asking for some ideas and tips that might help speed up the process.

Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.

[zachariah]

If we knew how to do this, we'd all be doing it!

Have you tried being really famous, or marrying an influential industrialist?

On a more serious note...you could try picking a really contentious subject and writing something controversial about it, and get lucky. There are lone self-publishers out there who've made a go of it, but reading about them it sounds like they did just as much work - if not more - to succeed than if they'd done it the 'usual' way.

[Jennifer P]

Okay.

You're working on a false assumption.

SOME publishers do require exclusivity on first contact. Many do not. Virtually NO agents expect it until they're reading the full manuscript.

Not sending out simultaneous submissions is normal in short stories (where the writer generally has more than one piece out at a time). It is all but unheard of in novel length manuscripts.

Send out in batches...a few agents or publishers at a time. Or send one query a day. Whatever works best for your mind and schedule, but unless its well into the process and they ask for an exclusive, don't give them one. If they do ask for one, it's reasonable to expect it to be time limited...a month is normal for agents, I'd give publishers (who have more people who need to see it) about three or so.

That's how you speed up the process. By not handing out exclusives like candy.

[KatG]

Given your circumstances, e-self-publishing might be the best way to go. You can hire a free-lance publicist to help market it and use your music contacts to publicize it on the Net. You can also do a print self-publishing by hiring a printer/binder company, trying to get a distribution company to help you distribute it and again, a free-lance publicist.

Another, slower alternative is to use your music and Hollywood contacts to get stuff to an agent who will do a quick read for you. (If you have a music agent and that agent is part of a larger firm, they may have a lit agent branch.) That might yield you an agent faster than some, and the agent can sell a novel if it's ready to go and the agent thinks it will work. But even if the agent does sell the novel to a publisher, the book itself won't come out for 7 months to 2 years after you sell it, depending on the publisher's schedule. So self-publishing may be the way you want to go.

Beyond that, there's no easy way to do it. Getting a deal can come quickly sometimes, but there's no way to know if that will happen on a particular book. You definitely need an agent, so using your other business credentials and contacts might get you to leverage a quick read as a favor, but it is rather different from Hollywood.

[kmtolan]

After searching the Internet I have come up with the impression that getting a novel published for the first time appears to be a younger person's game.

Heh, guess again. We're not that far apart in age and I'm not complaining (grin). Getting a large house to look at you requires an agent these days, can take years, and is a lot like dumping a huge bucket of water into a shot glass and hoping your particular drop makes it in. The reward for your patience is better exposure and more money for your work if you do get in.

E-books are the future of mass market, and may eventually kill off paperbacks and possibly some publishers who don't "get it". That said, the smaller publishers employing e-books as their primary venue are a much better bet for new authors trying to break in in my opinion. These shops are able to take chances where a large house is more interested in the next block buster. If your work is good, you have a much better shot at being published in this market, however your return on investment is minimal compared to any large house that tosses out advances (no advances with most small presses).

Don't kid yourself, though. Save for author mills and thinly disguised vanity presses, the small presses maintain rejection rates around 98%. Most of this is because too many writers mistake e-book publishers as being "easy" and send in crap. Also, it remains difficult to make any real money with a small publisher due to issues with limited exposure and not being in book stores for the most part. You don't just send in a book and start writing again - you have to promote yourself as well.

So, the take here is that you are not too old...heh. There are far more opportunities for getting yourself legitimately published now than ever before - once you include small publishers.

Kerry

[brinley hook]

Thank you for your ideas and comments.

KatG - Unfortunately no Hollywood contacts. As for the music industry, I wrote music from age 14 - 24 and I am now 59. The contacts I have are a few musicians (most of the rest are dead) and the folks who send me my royalty checks.

Zachariah - On a more serious note...you could try picking a really contentious subject and writing something controversial about it, and get lucky. There are lone self-publishers out there who've made a go of it, but reading about them it sounds like they did just as much work - if not more - to succeed than if they'd done it the 'usual' way.

As far as a subject, I don't want to write something controversial just to get published, that's why I left the music business. I have had a passion for sff for over 45 years and have over 3,000 sff books in my basement that I have read and some ... reread. I want to try to get a sff book I have already written and am already working on the sequel, published.

And .... it's not that I don't believe in hard work and grinding it out. It took me 2,000 songs before I got my first number 1, so I do understand what a work ethic is. It's just that I smoke 3 packs of cigarettes a day, have had heart surgery twice in the last 4 years, and have no plans on giving up smoking, so I figure my time is limited.

I was hoping upon hope that there might be a fast track other E-publishing. While I agree that E-publishing is the way of the future, it's far less than 20%of the market as of 2009.

kmtolan - thanks for the ideas and just to let you know, this isn't about making money or what they pay. This is about doing something I have always wanted to do and I have loved every minute I have spent on this project, all 12 months worth, all 4 rewrites worth. Being published is something I wish for, but the journey has been the true experience that I would not trade for anything..

Again, I do appreciate all of your thoughts, thank you.

[kmtolan]

kmtolan - thanks for the ideas and just to let you know, this isn't about making money or what they pay. This is about doing something I have always wanted to do and I have loved every minute

Sounds like KatG has your best suggestion, which is to self-publish.

Kerry

[KatG]

KatG - Unfortunately no Hollywood contacts. As for the music industry, I wrote music from age 14 - 24 and I am now 59. The contacts I have are a few musicians (most of the rest are dead) and the folks who send me my royalty checks.

And the royalty check people know music agents who may know literary agents. I'm not saying that this is going to get you an agent -- it's not Hollywood. But if you are trying to "fast track," then one place to try to speed things up is get a literary agent to agree to take a quick look over your work, and if the agent likes it, then you can get selling relatively fast.

But again, even if you sell fast, publishing in print with a publisher takes some time. So e-publishing, which can be done right away, may be your best bet, unless you're willing to start chewing nicotine gum and quit sacrificing your life to your addiction. (Although you could also get hit by a truck tomorrow, but still, better odds.)

A few people have done well, quite well, self-publishing electronically through Amazon, though I don't know what terms and costs are involved. It is a small market, but you may still sell as many copies of an e-book or POD as many print titles do out in the stores.

[wwfward]

Why don't you write about your experiences in the music industry since you sound like you were successful at it? That's non-fiction though, but that'll at least get a published book under your belt and perhaps a reader base. You can then use that as a spring board for whatever fiction project you might have.

[johnkarr]

brinley hook : That's the spirit, man. Damn the torpedoes!

No one is guaranteed time at this gig. Someone with a strong ticker may hit the writer's block or cascading anxieties so hard as to be rendered impotent. If you've got the mental prowess to keep plugging, why not do so?

I agree with the estimable Katg on the self-pubbed ebook thing for the quickest way in. I'm starting that way with a book of my own that hasn't seen publishing daylight for a decade. The Wall Street Journal recently had an article about how ebooks are really taking hold now, so much so that traditional publishers can no longer ignore them. And while most folks won't sell huge amounts, there is no stacked deck against it either, particularly when the reader is only paying $1.99 or $3.99 for something that could be interesting.

I'm kind of leaning toward Smashwords, as it has several formats and is supposed to making a deal with Amazon for kindle.

But then, Amazon got the whole thing rolling, imo, with Kindle. So I'm a little torn and have only begun to compare ....

https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin

http://www.smashwords.com/

It also depends on what kind of book you've written. Small press might get back to you in a reasonable amount of time.