Today is a monumental day in the long and winding road to getting my first novel published. As a new novelist I had no real idea of how to go about getting a work published. All my life, I've always read heaps of books and so of course I knew the names of all the great publishers: Penguin, Random House, Harper-Collins, Bantam etc, etc, etc, but I had absolutely no idea where to start on the process.
It soon became apparent that the big publishers don't even accept copies of new works from unknown authors, they rely wholly and solely on literary agents to recommend new works to them for consideration - so then, that was the obvious answer - find a literary agent prepared to consider my work. Easier said than done!
When I first start looking around at literary agents most seemed uninterested in new works. I read horror stories about authors submitting their works to numerous agents and never even once getting a response. In fact the most common phrase I read at this point of my research was: "I am not currently considering any new authors for publication - submissions are currently closed. What to do! What to do! What to!
It was around this time that I discovered "Indie Publishing" or independent publishing. Now that seemed like a real option - if only I could afford it! The whole idea of independent publishing appealed to me - I guess its the sort of underground, back-door way of getting into the publishing game, that appealed to me. There seemed no end of people prepared to assist me to make my dream come true - from copy editors, to proofreaders, to cover designers, right through to actual independent publishing houses and publicists. The problem was and is - they all wanted a slice of the cake along the way. Nobody it seemed was prepared to front up to get the book published and take their cut from the sales - too risky I suppose. They all wanted their payments up-front and although I have no doubt there are some great and wonderfully gifted people out there, doing this type of work, up-front money was just beyond my current circumstances. So what was left?
I discovered crowd-funding through Twitter actually, but I had my doubts about it. There is a crowd-funding platform specifically designed for authors called Pubslush and I was seriously considering that option, when I discovered, quite by chance, (Gotta love Google) a much more, to me anyway, logical style of crowd-funding...I discovered Pentian! http://pentian.com
Pentian is different. My biggest problem (in my head anyway) with crowd-funding was that you were asking people to fund YOUR book, with the only tangible rewards being things like signed copies of the book or a character named after a donor etc. What Pentian does is turn the whole idea on its head, by offering a DIRECT investment in the sale of the book. For three years, investor's (not donor's) will receive a share of the book's sales, plus the other benefits mentioned before, like a signed copy. This, to me, seemed a better and fairer system than just asking for assistance on a purely altruistic basis.
Hopefully and with much trepidation I submitted my novel to them. I am pleased to say that Pentian liked what they saw and The Second Coming is now up for funding on their website. Please visit it - check it out - and if you want to invest in a new, exciting author, please, please do. A small investment gets you and me into the publishing game - That is what is so awesome about Pentian!
http://pentian.com/book/fund/652
It soon became apparent that the big publishers don't even accept copies of new works from unknown authors, they rely wholly and solely on literary agents to recommend new works to them for consideration - so then, that was the obvious answer - find a literary agent prepared to consider my work. Easier said than done!
When I first start looking around at literary agents most seemed uninterested in new works. I read horror stories about authors submitting their works to numerous agents and never even once getting a response. In fact the most common phrase I read at this point of my research was: "I am not currently considering any new authors for publication - submissions are currently closed. What to do! What to do! What to!
It was around this time that I discovered "Indie Publishing" or independent publishing. Now that seemed like a real option - if only I could afford it! The whole idea of independent publishing appealed to me - I guess its the sort of underground, back-door way of getting into the publishing game, that appealed to me. There seemed no end of people prepared to assist me to make my dream come true - from copy editors, to proofreaders, to cover designers, right through to actual independent publishing houses and publicists. The problem was and is - they all wanted a slice of the cake along the way. Nobody it seemed was prepared to front up to get the book published and take their cut from the sales - too risky I suppose. They all wanted their payments up-front and although I have no doubt there are some great and wonderfully gifted people out there, doing this type of work, up-front money was just beyond my current circumstances. So what was left?
I discovered crowd-funding through Twitter actually, but I had my doubts about it. There is a crowd-funding platform specifically designed for authors called Pubslush and I was seriously considering that option, when I discovered, quite by chance, (Gotta love Google) a much more, to me anyway, logical style of crowd-funding...I discovered Pentian! http://pentian.com
Pentian is different. My biggest problem (in my head anyway) with crowd-funding was that you were asking people to fund YOUR book, with the only tangible rewards being things like signed copies of the book or a character named after a donor etc. What Pentian does is turn the whole idea on its head, by offering a DIRECT investment in the sale of the book. For three years, investor's (not donor's) will receive a share of the book's sales, plus the other benefits mentioned before, like a signed copy. This, to me, seemed a better and fairer system than just asking for assistance on a purely altruistic basis.
Hopefully and with much trepidation I submitted my novel to them. I am pleased to say that Pentian liked what they saw and The Second Coming is now up for funding on their website. Please visit it - check it out - and if you want to invest in a new, exciting author, please, please do. A small investment gets you and me into the publishing game - That is what is so awesome about Pentian!
http://pentian.com/book/fund/652
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