Let us look at the newspaper, shall we? Huh, that’s odd. I thought that would be big news. There seems to be an absence of a certain belletristic piece. A headline regarding mass-awareness of a certain erudite variety. Oh, have you not heard? It was my understanding that everyone had heard…

I WROTE A BOOK! I’m highly surprised that you haven’t caught on to this yet. I mean, there’s only one copy, that I used up all my roomate’s ink printing out, and the binder containing it has been at my mother’s house for months, because she is one of only 2.5 people who have read it, but still, I wrote it like a year ago! Get with the program!

Okay. So perhaps there really would be no way for you to know about it. Maybe, just maybe, all the literary agencies, and publishing houses i’ve sent queries to have given me form rejection letters, if they bothered to respond to my advances at all. Maybe to them i’m a nobody from nowhere, with no powerful industry connections, no vast portfolio of published work, and no proven track record of creating sellable content to validate their initial investment. In their defense, I AM a nobody from nowhere. I’m new to the game. I’ve got no stats. My fan base is small, and consists mainly of people I share genes with. It’s still an ass-backwards, frustrating system.

If I sent out a thousand query letters, eventually lightning would strike and I would find an agent who wasn’t completely swamped with work already, who was actively seeking a new story from a new author in the specific genre of my story, and my letter reached them at a good time on a convenient day in between their morning coffee and their afternoon facebook session, and the stars were aligned perfectly in the heavens and dread Cthulhu’s mighty dreams had encountered a receptive mind, and then maybe, just maybe they would send a letter back saying “Your story sounds cool, i’d like to see it.” And then we’d still be a year plus away from bookshelves, because it would take at least that long for my new-found literary agent, who is also busy representing other clients, to find a buyer in a big publishing house to take on my work. I would just represent myself to publishers, but they are so busy and overloaded with oodles of guff work that the big ones don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts at all, so you literally need an agent to even be considered. Son of a bitch.

I don’t want to wait that long. I want some closure RIGHT NOW. I’ve got ideas for my next stories, I want to lay this one to rest. What’s a young gentleman to do?

There are options. Vanity press, POD, Self-publishing, call them what you will, there are companies that will publish anything for you, quickly and professionally. The problem? They will publish anything. AND  you have to pay for it. So not only do I have to invest my own money into this endeavor, but most bookstores are uncomfortable stocking self-published books, because honestly, most of them are nut and corn filled crap.

It’s tricky. I read a lot. Most books that actual publishers produce aren’t great, but they still sell. My book, Apostate Konstantin, is really good. It takes place in an interesting world, it has entertaining characters with exciting problems, it’s got plenty of action, and even a little romance. At the end of the day it is, in fact, fun to read, and better than a lot of stuff out there. I want you to read it. (You can read excerpts here)

Toward that end, I have decided to go through a smaller POD publishing service. I will have to pay for it, but I will retain exhaustive creative control, and the process will take much less time to complete. I’m tired of waiting. I want to see my book in print. And then I want you to buy it.