Chace Randolph

Blog Post Number 70 Written and uploaded 10-20-2023

I have heard lots of advice and tips and strategies for getting published. For making that leap from writer to author. And to be honest, I’m not sure what I think anymore, I’m not sure what to do. How much of it is just confirmation bias for the people it has worked for, vs what is actually good practice.

So I’ll outline what I have been told, and you can tell me what you think.

On the side of self publishing, people, (by people I mean a dozen or so self published authors I have spoken to on Twitter and one or two more I have met IRL) tell me that it’s best to self publish because you’ll have complete control and freedom to control all the aspects of your books, the cover art, and editing and marketing. That the marketing part is the hard part, but that traditional publishers don’t help with marketing much, or at all any way, so you might as well go it alone, and not have to spend the time, and heart ache submitting query letters for so long, so many times. That The game is rigged when submitting query letters.

On the other hand, those who say traditional publishing is still THE way, (a couple well published authors I have met in person such as W. M. Gear, Jonathan Mayberry and Weston Ochise.) the most successful method, since the traditional way is going to have all that old school pipe line to get your books on shelves in stores across the country, to be punished and available with more than print on demand stuff through amazon. That you’re still going to be better able to land movie deals and big, old school traditional media attention. That the hoops you have to jump through to get an agent is worth the circus act. But while I am on the subject of querying agents, its further divided into two camps for doing that.

One side say you should follow a formula, have a template for your query letters and send them in volume. To just dump query letters in bulk on agents, and eventually one will get through. Sort of the accuracy through volume approach. The other method is to quasi internet stalk the agent/agents you are submitting to, and carefully craft a personal query letter for each and every agent you send to. Taking the few but good approach, with quality over quantity instead of quantity over quality.

But the counter argument to some of that, is I have heard of automated systems in the agent’s emails, so that query letters that don’t fit the specific template get auto rejected before it is ever seen by an agents eyes, because agents do indeed get hit with a lot of query letters. Especially now that we have the AI cat out of the proverbial bag. Because they’re going to get spammed even more, not just with people submitting AI written stories, but with AI submitting to anyone and everyone. Crow-barring the automated system to the authors benefit. SO much so I have heard of some smaller publishers and a few agents just closing to submissions entirely because they can not handle either the volume of AI aided submissions they are getting, or because they are having to hard of a time sorting through what is human generated and a AI generated. Which again is another of the argument points for the self publishing camp.

Who again say because you have full control of your content and wont have to rewrite or reorganize things if you don’t want to, and wont be slaved to their time line, you’ll be able to publish as much as you want, as often as you want. I’ve even been told you should have several books written and release a novel a month for as many consecutive months as you can. Not having to wait months or years for the big wheels of the traditional machine to get up to speed, and not have to compete against AI generated stuff for the agent’s attention. But again, a counter point to that it, with AI writing now, you can self publish what ever AI written book you want, so instead of competing for the agent’s attention with AI, you are competing for the readers attention with AI.

So as you can see, even with some simple elaboration here, there is going to be more to it than just this, and more points and counter points to each for and against side of the argument. And at the moment, I don’t know anymore. I’m not sure what I want to to, what I am going to do.

Tell me down in the comments what you think on the self publishing vs traditional publishing discussion, as there are many valid points and first hand anecdotes on both sides of the issue. I am stricken with indecision. Paralyzed by the sheer number of opinions and options on the matter.