If you saw my comment in Supriya’s post this week, you already know that, like her, I haven’t sent out any query letters. It’s not that I haven’t faced my fair share of torment, criticism and rejection though. I enter contests.
Considering contests are likely a topic for another week, I won’t go into the gory details. I will mention I once read the advice, writers should place in a few contests before they send out query letters to publishers and agents, which is why I opted for entering writing competitions first. I guess I got lucky when I finally co-won a contest last year. It landed me an agent, although I’m still trying to figure out what that bought me. Again, another topic…
Okay, now back to this week’s post. Well kinda.
Besides not having a novel quite ready to submit to a publisher, there’s another reason I haven’t sent out query letters. The publishing industry is changing. Funny, but Greg reminded us Wicked Writers of this fact earlier this week when he emailed a link to The New York Times article With Kindle, the Best Sellers Don’t Need to Sell. Heck, as a Kindle owner, I take full advantage of the free stuff to figure out what books to purchase. So I expect to give away my first novel to sell more novels in the series. Oh yeah, I am over @TheCourierNovel, along with copies on Textnovel, Authonomy, Booksie and my website. I also expect to give away the second novel, initially. So this article is right on in my opinion.
Also call me a glutton for punishment, because no matter how many times I’ve been warned not to do it, I still haven’t ruled out self publishing. Sure, I’d rather go with a big publisher. Who wouldn’t? There’s just something about going through the experience that I think would be valuable.
Oops. Am I rambling and getting too far off topic again?
I know I’ll be writing a query letter within the next couple months, but I’m really in no hurry, expecting it to be like resume writing. I used to edit resumes for an IT consulting company once upon a time. And since I can’t provide much more value to this week’s topic, I’ll cut it short and take off to enjoy my Friday.
Nicole Hadaway used to work as a lawyer, but now she only writes about such things as bloodsuckers and deals with the devil. 
She is the author of Release, a literary paranormal vampire tale set during World War II. She is currently working on the sequel, Return.
C.J. Ellisson
W. J. Howard
Gregory Marshall Smith
Supriya Savkoor
Not bad, you landed an agent without having to send out a single query. We should all be so lucky. And yes, I’m also prepping my copy for contests before working on the query. Sort of like stage rehearsal, huh?
You mean agents don’t just magically produce contracts from interested publishers overnight?
Ugh… I really think it will be the waiting that kills me… or drives me to self publish…
You might want to rethink the self-publishing route. My friend Starlene Stringer (actress/writer/radio personality/voice-over artist) went that route and found it very difficult.
I agree with Greg on the self-pub route. A publisher gets you distribution and reviews. Both of those get you into libraries. Libraries represent a huge channel to reach readers.
Some rejections are a delight to receive. They’re the ones that arrive after the publishing contract is in your hands.
The AgentQuery discussion list is great for giving support to those who are in query mode. Folks on that list help each other tighten queries online. AgentQuest is a sub-group of Guppies, which is a chapter of Sisters in Crime. And there’s an annual contest for those who tally the most rejections.