I would say don't self publish. I might say something different next year, or five years from now, but right now I think that it's just too hard for a reader to find a decent self-published work, when they're buried in the huge heaps of self-published junk. To create a decent self-published work, you have to do the work of several professionals--you're not just the writer, you're the editor, designer, typographer, advertising guy, and probably a bunch of other jobs that I'm not thinking of right now. Then you have to put in a lot of hours, probably a bunch of hours every single week, to market that work. Are you prepared to do that much work right now? If you're not, your work will sink under the waves of other self-published works. If you are, odds are that that will still happen, because the world has no reliable way of judging the quality of self-published books. Your work has value. Don't throw it away by doing a halfway job of publishing it. I won't say that self-publishing is throwing it away, because I think that someday that will be viable and how will we get to that someday without people who take the risk? But self-publishing without putting a ton of work into it is quite likely to be throwing it away. If you feel, as you've said, that there's still work to do on your original work, then it's not yet time to find an agent.
I'm not sure if it's polished. I feel like it's done, and a lot of the people reading it do too. But here's the problem with my makeshift editing/beta-reading team. One of them has gone MIA in my life and I haven't talked to her in weeks. Two of them doesn't read Science Fiction or Fantasy so is clueless on the genre, but okay on genre. Two of them doesn't do well grammar wise so is clueless about grammar. One of them just isn't good at giving advice, says it's good (but that wasn't what I asked for). So I've got unprofessional opinions running here. And I don't have hundreds or thousands to throw at an editor, so I don't know.
That part is just as well--throwing money at an editor is not the way to get a book ready to submit. You need to develop your own skills to the point that you can polish the book yourself. Paying someone is likely to cost more than you'd ever make from the book.
What do I look for? I read my manuscript over and over again, probably twice a week. Each time, by the end of it, I want to kill myself. I nit-pick at every error and I get right to fixing it, but it's still painful. There comes a point where it's painful to reread because it's no fun. I KNOW what's going to happen. I know the character's reaction. I know the effect of that reaction. And it's lost its taste. When am I done? And what can I do for the final polish?
There are areas on writing forums (private, protected) for critiques. Or check around the various forums for appropriate beta readers.
It might be best to, yes, move on to the next work, but *without* throwing away this work on a poor publishing attempt. Odds are that there is more for you to learn, and you're right that it's no fun to try to learn it by chewing on the same work over and over and over and over. There's nothing wrong with putting this in a drawer (preferably more than one drawer in more than one place, so you have multiple backups) and moving on to the next thing. Edited to add: And, yes, you could submit some work here for critique, when you have the required number of posts, days, critiques, etc. It doesn't have to be part of your novel--you could just write some short stories or scenes for the purpose of seeking critique.
I need one more critique to start posting here. But I've got trust issues so my betas are close friends and family. It's hard to let people I don't know well read.
You almost got it right: - 20 posts (and you've already got 70 ) - 14 days membership - 2 constructive critiques in any part of the Workshop Remember, when you post your work, that we are here to help you. Taking the critique might be really hard at first, but the reviewers only mean good. Take me as an example, the critique on my first (and only) posted writing almost brought be to tears the first time I read it, but a week later I went back and saw it in a new light. Even though I kind of neglected the story afterwards and never revised it properly, the experience of receiving the critique is worth gold to me and I've never regretted pressing that "post thread" button.
I'm looking forward to criticism, as crazy as that sounds. I want to know what my faults are and I want to fix them. I truly can't wait.
yes, there are good ways... i have a raft of good agents and publishers listings that i pass on to anyone who needs them, but you're not ready to start looking till you have a completed ms that's been polished to a faretheewell and in proper form to be submitted...
