My New Novel
Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2016 9:57 am
I've been writing stories since I was a kid, and I've started I don't know how many novels. I've even finished a few, and I dabbled in submitting a couple of them to agents and publishers. But I would quickly get discourage and stop submitting. The stuff I wrote was usually in the suspense thriller genre.
In 2013, I decided to try to write a serious novel, one that tackled big issues like life and love and the loss of a spouse, etc. I pounded out over 60,000 words on it during NaNoWriMo 2013 and then didn't like where it was going. I've been sporadically revising it ever since, still never getting to an actual end.
Last year, during periods where I was stuck on that novel, I started writing something else just for fun and posting it one chapter at a time at a couple of sites devoted to that particular erotica sub-genre. It became fairly popular at those sites, and what became the final chapter of that novel actually won a year-end Readers Choice award for its category at Literotica.com. And I kind of liked how the whole thing came together, so much that I decided to polish it up and publish it.
I really didn't know how to query or pitch it, so even at the beginning, I thought about publishing it myself. I have a friend here in the area who got her first dystopian YA novel published by a small independent press. She had paid for a professional edit in order to get it accepted, and she still had to do her own marketing for the book. Her royalty from this small press was 37 cents per copy. That publisher went under, and she got the rights back and published the book on her own. She still had to do her own marketing, but her royalty per copy was ten times what it was from that small press. I figured the odds of getting my novel accepted by one of the big five publishing houses was almost nil (even if I did figure out how to pitch it), and after hearing about my friend's struggles, I ruled out submitting to independent presses. So, I went ahead and published it myself.
It has been out about six weeks, and sales have been OK (although when I give members of my writing group some of my sales numbers, some of the ones who have self-published tell me that it is selling VERY well). Not knowing how to categorize it, I listed it as erotica, although there's very little actual sex in it.
It's on Amazon in paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Volunteer-Novel- ... 1534635246 and on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Volunteer-D-Jona ... 01HAM329Q/
In 2013, I decided to try to write a serious novel, one that tackled big issues like life and love and the loss of a spouse, etc. I pounded out over 60,000 words on it during NaNoWriMo 2013 and then didn't like where it was going. I've been sporadically revising it ever since, still never getting to an actual end.
Last year, during periods where I was stuck on that novel, I started writing something else just for fun and posting it one chapter at a time at a couple of sites devoted to that particular erotica sub-genre. It became fairly popular at those sites, and what became the final chapter of that novel actually won a year-end Readers Choice award for its category at Literotica.com. And I kind of liked how the whole thing came together, so much that I decided to polish it up and publish it.
I really didn't know how to query or pitch it, so even at the beginning, I thought about publishing it myself. I have a friend here in the area who got her first dystopian YA novel published by a small independent press. She had paid for a professional edit in order to get it accepted, and she still had to do her own marketing for the book. Her royalty from this small press was 37 cents per copy. That publisher went under, and she got the rights back and published the book on her own. She still had to do her own marketing, but her royalty per copy was ten times what it was from that small press. I figured the odds of getting my novel accepted by one of the big five publishing houses was almost nil (even if I did figure out how to pitch it), and after hearing about my friend's struggles, I ruled out submitting to independent presses. So, I went ahead and published it myself.
It has been out about six weeks, and sales have been OK (although when I give members of my writing group some of my sales numbers, some of the ones who have self-published tell me that it is selling VERY well). Not knowing how to categorize it, I listed it as erotica, although there's very little actual sex in it.
It's on Amazon in paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Volunteer-Novel- ... 1534635246 and on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Volunteer-D-Jona ... 01HAM329Q/