As you probably know, I’ve been working towards the goal of getting published for several years now. Last year I had some success with my short stories, managing to get three of them accepted by various e-magazines and digital sites. That success only encouraged me to work harder to get my books in front of publishers to try and get them published as well.

Then, in October, I received my first book contract for my YA Superhero novel, “Mik Murdoch, Boy Superhero”. The book is the first in what I expect to be a six-book series. I was (and still am) very excited about this development, but, as I have said many, many times, publishing is slow. I know where in the queue it sits for revisions and I know when the deadline is for the cover-art. I also know it probably won’t be available until Spring 2012.

That is the way of the industry, especially with smaller presses that have limited resources. I have no complaints and I cannot wait to get going on the process.

There have been additional developments in my quest to make my books available. A few months ago I decided to self-publish another YA book of mine. It was my thought that I could get the books to cross-promote each other and I would get another kind of publishing experience.

And let me tell you, it has really driven home why the publishing industry moves slowly.

Let me walk you through the process:

1. Finish manuscript and proof it and revise it until you think you have something good. Luckily, I was already at this point when I made the decision to self-publish. As some of you know, the question of when to stop revising and move on to step two is a bit of an arcane art. Set a deadline.
2. Get you manuscript in front of beta readers for critique and comment. I think this is a key step and can be accomplished in a couple ways: have trusted people who you know will give you an honest assessment of your work or use a community like Critters.org. In either case, be prepared to wait… and wait some more. You will not get as many responses back as you might expect, so use a bit of a shotgun approach. If you think you need three critiques, get six people to read your work. Set deadlines.
3. Start looking at cover-art and who or where you will acquire it. If you are asking someone to create it especially for your book, get them working on it immediately. Set deadlines.
4. Start researching how you are going to publish the book and with what service. There are many to chose from: Lulu.com, Createspace, Smashwords and a host of others, both good and bad. When you know how you are moving forward, understand the potential pitfalls and advantages of your decision. Set deadline to finish research.
5. Take all the comments from your beta readers and make the necessary changes to your book. This can be extremely time-consuming, so be prepared. Oh yeah, and set a deadline for the edits to be complete.
6. Take the finished pieces of cover-art and book and, using the templates provided by your service of choice, layout your book. Yes, you guessed it, set a deadline for completion of this step.
7. Do quality control of the book. Each eVersion has its own gotchas and you should get an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) of your print book. Spend the time necessary to go over each with a fine-toothed comb to remove any mistakes you may find. Unless, of course, you don’t care about the quality of the book. Set a deadline.
8. Release book. Set a deadline.

You couldn’t help but notice “set a deadline” in each step. That’s because this must be treated as a project and projects need deadlines. Without them, it will never get finished. People will never give their pieces the attention required and you will have other things get in the way. Also, don’t be too disappointed if your release date slides a little. In my case, I had hoped to release the book May 20th. It is now June 18th and the book is still under construction. My new release date is July 8th. I might be able to beat that, but that is my release deadline.

You should note, that none of the steps above include marketing and promotion. Those are key to selling your book and should be underway as soon as you have your plan in place. That way, you have some hope of selling your book once it is finished. But that is another project altogether.

The big lesson learned here? Publishing is slow, regardless of whether you do it yourself or have an actual publisher do it for you. Once you realize that, you will sleep better at night.

Tags: beta reader, cover, cover-art, createspace, critique, critters.org, deadline, editing, irreverent muse, line edits, lulu, lulu.com, Michell Plested, mik murdoch, Publishing, revision, self publishing, series, smashwords, superhero, YA

Whomever said “Without Risk, there can be no reward” was on to something. It is a saying that applies in spades to we writers.

We can write as much as we want, but until we actually let someone see it, we have no idea if it is good, bad or indifferent. Indeed, I would argue that without making it available for critique we writers will never really grow in our craft.

That sort of flies in the face of the “Practice makes perfect” mantra, but without feedback, we may get stuck writing the same stuff over and over. All that can do is solidify any mistakes we are already making. Granted, as we continue to write we probably start to see more and more of the problems (assuming we are prone to self-analysis) so our work should improve over time. I just don’t think it will improve as quickly as it might if we received outside feedback.

I am especially guilty of not sending my stuff out for review. I think it might have something to do with some of the useless, negative critiques i’ve gotten in the past. My favorite will remain, “I can see why it was rejected.” Great! Would you mind sharing your wisdom with me, oh great guru?

In the past months, I have put some of my work out for public consumption; namely two of my short stories in podcast form and I’ve entered a couple contests. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten much in the way of “I liked it, but…” or “it really didn’t grab me…” or much of anything else, really. That doesn’t tell me much except, it was either so bad that people quit listening/reading, swearing never to darken my virtual door again or it was “OK” and not really worth commenting on. I suppose, if the optimist in me were to step forth, it could also be “I liked it and don’t really feel worthy to comment”.

So, in an effort to both try something new and find out if I’m any damn good at something I’ve always wanted to write, I’ve got a new project underway. You may have already heard me hinting/talking about it. I’m writing a Science Fiction/Comedy that will be podcast over the coming months.

This addresses the whole “I’ve always wanted to podcast a book” and “I’ve always wanted to try my hand at humor” aspects of my creative aspirations. I figure that with 20 episodes of “Get Published” under my belt I have the tools I need to podcast the book so I’m only a little nervous about that aspect of the project. The writing humor side of things is an entirely different kettle of fish.

I think it may be because I have very high standards on that front.

My absolute favorite writing is Science Fiction and Fantasy as you may know. If I can get it with a healthy helping of humor, it’s even better. I’m always watching for the next new Terry Prachett book and I used to be that way with Robert Aspirin (until his untimely passing). I also make a habit of reading Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy” as least once every year.

Those three writers cast pretty big shadows and I want to do them honor by writing something they wouldn’t toss into the bin. It has taken me this long to get to actually attempting it BECAUSE I let their work intimidate me.

No more. I have already written and started recording the first episode of my new podcast which is titled “GalaxyBillies”. It is the story of five Hillbillies who are kidnapped by an alien starship and how they take the galaxy at large by… well surprise, I think more than anything. The first episode will be up on the site (and available in my “Get Published” feed) December 24, 2009.

I hope you will take the time to listen to the story and, love it or hate it, chime in with your comments. Because I am writing it episodically, if something isn’t working, I can adjust it on the fly. Your comments will help me with that.

I am nervous about the project, but I know I have to do it. It’s something I’ve wanted to try for a very long time so why not get started now? I hope you will join me in the grand experiment.

Personal Update

Other than the new podcast, I haven’t been up to much. My NaNoNovel is sitting quietly, waiting to be edited in a month or so and my fantasy novel is shelved for the time being. I have submitted a story to Absolute Xpress’s Flash Fiction contest and am waiting (patiently) to hear back in the coming months about that.

Oh yeah, and I’m getting ready for the holiday season. That’s enough, isn’t it?

Have a great week!

Tags: critique, douglas adams, fantasy, feedback, galaxy, Galaxybillies, hillbillies, hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, humor, irreverent muse, Michell Plested, podcast, review, robert aspirin, science fiction, taking risks, terry pratchett