Well, it's been a while since I last posted, and it's because I am a lazy bastard. Sorry. I don't know how many people actually read this, but it doesn't really matter. I would like to build an audience, but it is a slow process since I am working on finishing up my main selling point, my novel, Outside the Garden. I also have around six or maybe seven short stories, some essays, and even some poems to publish, but I would like to get them published in legitimate literary journals, whether online or in print. This is also a long process since I have to have high standards with my writing, and literary journals won't publish garbage -- any ones worth getting published in, anyhow.
Since it doesn't need to be a secret, I do have a strategy to build an audience, so, if you are one of the five or so people reading this (??), you heard it here first. If I am merely just delusional and I never go anywhere with my writing, then this will be entertaining in a train wreck sort of way. Either way, I hope I inform or entertain whoever happens upon reading this blog. Anyway, back to the point: my strategy.
First of all, I am going to finish rewriting/editing everything. This is the hard part -- I think. Next, I am going to start fishing for literary journals, using the handy dandy tool Duotrope's Digest, which is like the Writer's Market, only free. It's really great, if you are a writer, you should give it a try. They have a lot of different publications listed, more than I have ever been able to go through. You can search through them, enter your criteria, find a journal compatible with your writing style and all that.
After I find journals that I match my criteria: ones that publish literary fiction and satire, essays, or poetry, have a decent-sized audience, and also do book reviews* (this is key for the latter part of my plan, folks), then I will read them to figure out what fits where, follow the individual guidelines, and send them my work and whatever else they require. Then I wait, either get letters of acceptance or, more likely, rejection, and, if rejection, try again in another market, until I get everything published that I seek to get published.
For those of you who are writers, this whole process -- I am sure -- is not a mystery to you. Sorry if this is redundant.
Once I get some work published, and my book is finished, I will seek an agent to help me find a publisher, preferably a mid-sized one that will give me adequate attention as a writer, will take my ideas into consideration, will allow me to design the look of the product, and so forth, and will help me promote it. I also want a publisher that will focus on ebook promotion as well as print, since ebooks are a growing part of the industry, and I seek to embrace technology rather than dismiss it and want a publisher that is as progressive on the topic as me.
If it just sucks and no one wants to publish it or if just no one wants to publish it because it is too risque or controversial or "not right at this time" or whatever, then I will publish it anyway, on my way, on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, sell it as an e-book. Then I will move on to the next one and the next one and the next one. And more short stories. And whatever the Hell else I feel like writing, however the Hell else I feel like writing it. I will put it out there and see what happens...
...Which is probably what Paul Rubens was thinking just before he...
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