Self-publishing requires a lot of time and money. If you want more information, there are a ton of threads about this very issue that are worth reading. My opinion is that you should try the traditional publishing route.
My bad I should have mentioned that I am already self published due to the previously mentioned reasons that I was influenced to do so. I was just wondering if there is actually a viable commercial market for parody/satire that is equivalent to that of vampire romances or crime thrillers that in hindsight might make me question my foregone decision to self publish. But yeah self publishing a 100,000 word manuscript along with the price for editing & formatting is quite expensive that's for sure.
there is a market, though not as large a one as there is for other genres, and there are small niche presses that specialize in the off-beat, so you could have queried those directly, without an agent, and possibly been able to avoid paying to have your book published and marketed...
Don't let anyone fool you ... getting published is really really difficult in today's market place. When last did you see anyone buy a novel in a bookshop, leave alone an anthology of short stories or poetry? Being a wannabee writer today sux big time. Personally I think the future is in film scripts cos the very young still luv the movies. Writers like JK Rowling and Harry Potter come around once in a lifetime, whilst us hacks keep (hopefully) writing and writing and writing with no success at all. Maybe wannabee writers the world over should form a world wide publishing company and publish their own stuff.
Parody of a popular genre is always a stable niche. It won't generally bring fame, fortune, and suntanned vacuous babes, but it's a cozy little corner, IF you have the wit and the timing to make it work. The best genres to parody are those that take themselves too seriously to begin with. But avoid the low-hanging fruit. Twilight parodies abound, but it's such a ridiculous series that parody is wasted on it (apologies if there are actually fans of Twilight reading this). There is a Hunger Games parody, but I haven't read it, so I don;t know how good it is. What I do know is the author struck while the iron was hot - the parody seems to have come out during the peak of the Hunger Games' popularity. The Dark Shadows movie is a parody of the original soap opera. Why bother? It was a tedious, campy series to begin with, and the movie was made when most people had forgotten the series. The only thing - the ONLY thing - that made it at all viable was the popularity of Johnny Depp. If you are really interested in satire, study the periodical that was built around it, and thrives to this day - Mad magazine.
Do you think these same small niche presses you mentioned would be interested in picking up my series even if the 1st volume is already self published through createspace? My second volume WIP is just a proofread/polish edit away from being publish ready. Would that still be good enough to submit as is?
1. probably not... unless your self-pubbed series opener is selling like hotcakes... 2. absolutely not!... never submit anything that is not polished to a faretheewell, if you don't want to annoy whoever you send it to, to the point where nothing you send them in the future will even be looked at...
Or selling much better than hotcakes. I don't see too many cutthroat competitors vying to supplant IHOP.
IT'S supposed to be difficult to get published. The best Authors are the ones who never give up and keep finding a way to get out there.
What I've read is that knowing one's craft is enough to boost one's chances of being published in a quality place tenfold. Note that I admit that I don't know the craft yet. But I can see the importance of learning it. There are also places where writers can publish that accept 90% or so of their submissions. That makes it pretty easy to be "published."
Yeah thats what I thought. Its all good since I did not choose to become an author to attain commercial success anyway. As long as my artistic vision is published to my own personal liking is all that matters. So I guess that means I should just stick to self publishing.
Yes, me. I was published about thirty years ago, made some money, and had an open invite for my next fiction ms. It took a year of exhausting effort and one editor liked it, his partner did not. The next two months were the most stressful wife and I ever endured. Long story short--we were so disgusted and frustrated at the publisher that we put the finished ms in the basement. It sat there for decades. Over the past few years, loving wife passed on and I retired. Last month I dug out the long lost ms and read it. I think it's still good. Needs a great deal of updates, like cell phones and the Internet, but doable. That's why I'm on this site. Relearning.
yeah, but with those you will not be considered a 'published author' since they're vanity presses of one sort or another...
It's difficult for sure, but like many things in life -- persistence pays off. I spent countless hours pouring over e-zines from duotrope, and spent countless more hours preparing submissions for the mags I thought were suitable. After getting rejected by nearly two dozen of them, I finally scored with an e-zine that paid me 3 cents a word (which for my 1,200 word shorty story netted me $36). It wasn't much, but the feeling of having one bite made the numerous rejections worth it. My advice is to write until you have something you feel proud of -- something that you fell is better than anything you've done yet -- and then send it to as many relevant publications as you can (be wary about simultaneous submissions guidelines though; that is a topic for a whole other discussion). Most importantly, don't be discouraged by rejections. You will get A LOT of them. Develop a thick skin and keep plugging away at it. If the work is good, and your work ethic better, you'll find someone that will publish you.
