My Adventures into the world of Publishing

     When I was seven years old I told my mother that I intended to become a writer when I grew up. I will always remember what she said.

     “Well then, you’d better write short stories because you don’t have the patience to write long ones,” was her reply.

     That statement hurt my feelings and I never forgot it. However, the first book I did was a book of short stories called Curious Concepts. That book was published by Publish America in February of 2005. After that, however, I set out to prove my mother was wrong about my ability to write a novel. I started with a simple mystery novel. That is a genre that I love and I thought it would be fun to write one. I also thought it would be the easiest style to work with. Maybe I’d have enough patience to do that.

     I started writing a book called Fear Treads the Mountain in late January of 2005. I had finished the first draft of it sometime in June of 2005. After that I began with the re-writes. That took about a month and a half more. Even before that process had been completed I had began writing another book called Guilty. I finished the first draft of that book on the last day of 2005.

     I had learned that to submit to a top publisher you need an agent. That is because the publishers want an agent to screen the work first. That saves them a lot of time and money. If you submit to one of these agents they will send it back with a statement that they do not view un-agented work. When I first completed the book Fear Treads the Mountain I sent it to a few agents to see if one would represent me. I knew that agents get so many manuscripts that they can afford to pick and choose and most say that they represent less than 3% of the works submitted to them, however, I tried that route.

     Soon, as my mother had predicted, I became frustrated with that process, lost patience and went back to Publish America with my new manuscript, “Fear Treads the Mountain”, to see if they would want to publish it. They did.  Publish America is a small publisher and does not require that you have an agent. They are a traditional publisher but they charge more per book than most people want to pay, you sign away your rights for a number of years, and they don’t assist much with marketing.

     After I completed the second novel, Guilty, I decided once again to try to get an agent and I started sending the manuscripts out regularly. I got denials from the first four. I then sent it to five more. It was still in the process of being re-written but I sent a query letter hoping that I could get it finished by the time an agent would request it. Eventually, I found an agent. There was no guarantee that they would sell the book but it was encouraging that they agreed to represent it. Time went on with no action on the book “Guilty”.

     I started another novel called “Tempest Rider”. When that book was completed and I still had no publisher for “Guilty”, I decided to explore still another method of publishing. I knew I’d get discouraged if my manuscripts started piling up, which they were bound to do, if I kept writing two novels a year. I also knew that I had little patience with sending out and waiting, and sending out and waiting, for replies which were usually negative, or to get no reply at all. Perhaps my mother was right when she said I didn’t have a lot of patience. However, I do have something she didn’t address; I am frightfully persistent, as my cousin once told me.

     I published “Tempest Rider” with Authorhouse, a publish on demand company, and then another book called “Spooked” with them as well. The advantage was that I had all my rights and a contract that I could end any time I wanted to. I also had an ISBN number so any book store could obtain my books and I had a bar code. Books were available through Amazon, Borders.com, etc.

      At this point, I decided to try a less expensive self publication approach. I found that Xlibris charged less for their initial set up of the book. I bought a two book deal. This seemed good at first but then I was disappointed with the results. The books cost me more, the cover was not as well designed etc. The first book I published with them was called “The Smelly Man”. The second book in that deal was called “Manifesting Destiny”

  About this time I started thinking about Guilty which had been with an agent going no where for a long time. I contacted the agent and asked if there was any reason I couldn’t self publish it while leaving it with them for possible sale. They said that would be fine, that they called it proving demand, and they recommended Eloquence publishers. “Guilty” came out in the spring of 2008 at about the same time “Manifesting Destiny” did.

    Now it is August 2008 and I am thinking of trying a still different approach with the book “The Abandoned Ghost”, which I am currently re-writing. I’m wondering if I can go to a publisher like Morris Publishing and have a photo ready book, purchase 100 copies which is mandatory and have the book printed by them. The drawback is that they do not do ISBN numbers or barcodes. I would get 100 books though for the price I’d pay to have the book set up by Authorhouse. That publisher had given me 20 books for a 698.00 investment, Xlibris had only given me 1 book.

    Whatever I do, I plan to continue on with my odyssey into the world of publishing. I will adjust my course and experiment as I go. In  the confused path I've already tread, I have managed to make my work available to the public rather than to let manuscripts stack up and grow dusty with time. I have not done so well with the marketing aspects, but I continue to work on different goals in that area. I find that writing and marketing are two very different skills. It was not a good strategy to set my books in small Southern Ohio towns only to find that four of five counties do not have book stores in them.
    As for my patience, a skill my mother thought I was lacking in,
I've grown to see her point, but knowing that, I knew to try something like self publishing before my lack of sucess caused me to crumble into dispair and give up on the goal.The publishing world is fraught with minefields and it pays to know yourself when trying to circumvent them.

Saundra R. Akers

3260 Colony Hill LN.

Columbus, Ohio 43204