Striking out with the publishing establishment

My Unorthodox Journey to the Published Land: 4

So, my manuscript was finished, at least to my inexperienced eye. Now, to find an agent and/or publisher… right.

What’s next?

So I followed all the advice the internet had kindly aggregated and curated for me sending me madly off in all directions. Actually that’s not quite true, I really just wanted to use that classic line of Stephen Leacock’s. I had a fairly good idea of what to try next. I’d already decided to dispense with the “only approach one literary agent or publishing house at a time” direction I’d received from more than one advisor. I quickly learned that the traditional publishing world seemed to move a geological speed, so the “one at a time” methodology just seemed painful, tedious, and at the very least, exceedingly time-consuming. So, depending on the sometimes explicit and sometimes absent submission guidelines, I sent off appropriate combinations of query letters, sample chapters, and full manuscripts to dozens and dozens of literary agents and smaller publishing houses across Canada and into the United States. Then in my wildest dreams I sat back and waited for the feeding frenzy to ensue over my debut blockbuster novel—you know the funny one I’d wisely written about Canadian politics.

So I waited, and waited, diligently followed up, waited some more, followed up some more. Then for something completely different, I waited a bit longer before following up yet again. Did I mention the waiting? This is a process with which the aspiring writers among you may well be familiar. After twelve months (last I checked that’s an entire year) of harrying agents and publishers, I was greeted by a deafening…

In fact, permit me to announce—I don’t think a drumroll is necessary—how many rejection letters I received in that futile year: None. Not one. In case I’ve not been clear, zero.

I hadn’t made a big enough impact on the traditional publishing establishment to generate even a single automated rejection letter. Sigh. I still really didn’t know what I was doing. I just knew it wasn’t working. I suppose it’s remotely possible that it was working but just very, very, VERY slowly. But after a year of trying, I figured it was time for a different approach.

Self-Publishing

It was my wife, Nancy, who suggested late in 2006 that I consider self-publishing the novel, if only to be done with it and justify all the hours I’d already committed to it. With no evidence to suggest that, were I to continue my attempts to batter down the doors of traditional publishers, the response would be any different, self-publishing seemed worth a try. I’m not suggesting I thought this through carefully, balancing the pros and cons, and seriously considering what it all meant. It just gave me a way to move forward when I appeared to be at a standstill. To make a long story short, I signed up with iUniverse for a publishing package that included an editorial review, cover design, the ISBN, online retail listings for print-on-demand and e-book versions, and a box of ten printed copies for me.

I didn’t want to self-publish. I was disappointed. But this would at least allow me to get my book out there, if only to discover—as noted in my last post—whether I had in fact written a novel. I still didn’t really know.

As a communications and marketing guy by day, I realized that as a self-published author, I’d need to build an audience for my novel on my own. My book would not be in any bookstores (unless I cajoled a few personally to sell them on consignment) and there would not be any reviews in the already dwindling newspapers pages devoted to books. So I cooked up an idea. I decided to podcast my entire novel (audio version), chapter by chapter, and give it away for free on iTunes and all the other podcast directories of the day. Had I known that by early 2007, no one in Canada had yet podcast a novel in its entirety, I may well not have done it. Ignorance is bliss, or perhaps in my case, lucky.

Podcasting The Best Laid Plans

I was already a podcaster. In April of 2006, a work colleague and I had started a weekly half-hour podcast on the state of the communications agency world called Inside PR. (We recorded 200 weekly episodes over four years before turning the mics over to new hosts.)

So I already knew how to record, edit, add music, upload to a podcast hosting service, prepare the show notes, etc. So why not podcast my novel and make it available on my website and through the aforementioned podcast directories like iTunes? So, still without thinking too hard about it, that’s exactly what I did.

Early podcasting days recording my first novel in the room where I still write.

I found some nice music for the intro and extro, had a voiceover artist and ball hockey friend of mine record the show opening I’d use for all episodes, and worked hard at reading the chapters well, and then editing each episode to remove any deep breathing, coughs, and the one time I ingested a fly in the middle of a sentence (I’m not kidding about that). I posted one chapter each week until the whole novel was complete. To help spread the word, I recorded customized audio promos and sent them to all of my podcasting pals. The podcasting community was, and I hope remains, generous in supporting other voices. My audio promos were aired on various popular podcasts and that helped kickstart my listener base.

I had no idea if listeners would even find my novel podcast let alone find favour with it. But it seemed to work. People started subscribing to the podcast. I wasn’t convinced very many Canadians would have an interest in a satirical novel of Canadian politics. So imagine my shock when I started getting emails and comments on the podcast blog from listeners in far flung parts of the world. A listener in the highlands of Scotland said he loved the podcast and then corrected my pronunciation of my accidental MP’s brand of single malt scotch (true story). A listener in Shanghai emailed me from a traffic jam saying Chapter 9, that I’d uploaded less than an hour earlier, saved him from the boredom of his bumper-to bumper commute. Listeners from Australia, Indonesia, India, England, the US, Egypt, the Netherlands, South Africa and beyond all checked in with supportive comments. The only negative reaction I ever received was a complaint at having to wait a week until the next chapter was to be released.

Click here to sample an early episode of The Best Laid Plans podcast.

My subscriber base was growing daily, but more importantly, the universally positive response to the story finally made me consider the possibility that I may actually have written a novel. A few close family members had read it by then and they all liked it. But then again, they loved me. They were family. Was I really getting the straight goods from them? Likely not. So a spate of supportive comments from people in other parts of the world (and Canada) who didn’t know me in the slightest, was critical in my decision ultimately to self-publish the novel.

My Ten Books Arrive

I worked with a copy editor, designer, and proofreader at iUniverse to get the novel ready for publishing. By early August, the official listings for The Best Laid Plans on Amazon and Chapters.Inidigo.ca were live. What a thrill.

By the end of the summer, I figured we’d done all we could. So, with the podcast still attracting new listeners, a box of ten books arrived in my office in early September, 2007. This was my “author package.”

They were the only ten printed copies in existence. All books ordered through Amazon or Chapters.Indigo.ca would be printed individually and sent off to the buyers. Such was the then revolutionary world of “print on demand” publishing.

So I was actually holding a copy of my first novel in my hands. It was a surreal and undeniably memorable moment for me. I had written a novel and now it took on corporeal form in my hands. Now what?

Next up: Peddling my novel one Toronto bookstore at a time. A real book launch. And dreaming about the Leacock Medal.