Hey Subetian writers!

Wondering how many of you hope to one day publish, and if you've considered your options, and what you think you'll do. I've heard a lot of advice about a lot of different types of publishing, but I've always set my heart on finding an agent and going through some sort of publishing house, big or small. This is because I'm not super good at self-promoting, and neither am I capable of really protecting my rights or asking for a fair price for my work; a publishing house's best interests, if they buy the book, are in promoting it, as are my agent's who would be paid by the book sales as well. The problem of some publishing company saying "Nice book, newbie, give you $50 for it" and my saying "OMG YOU WILL PUBLISH ME OKAY :D :D :D" are eliminated when I'm not talking to the publisher. This leaves me with instead a few responsibilities: write the book, and do what I can to promote myself. I can do those things.

Some in my writing group are planning on self-publishing. They have a lot of tools for self-promotion and can write shorter stories and write them quickly to churn out several books which they can publish shortly after one another, an important tool for self-publishing. (I can't do that. I'm too long-winded and my editing process is longer.)

What are your thoughts on agents, publishers big or small, self-publishing...editors...etc? Anyone sending query letters currently? Anyone making good progress?

I have written 4 novels. Publishing really isn't a priority for me right now since I'm focusing on getting my degree first, but I have looked into it. Honestly, the self publishing option looks best for me even though I'm terrible at self promoting as well. I'm just going to have to get better at that :) My reasoning for this is that I like to write in different genres and if you go through an agent and a publishing house they tend to pigeonhole you. Also, I am an artist and like to design my own covers and draw my own illustrations (for the 1 book i'v written that needed them) and traditional publishers don't allow the author to make those kinds of choices.

There are pro's and con's to all options and the most that you can do is look over all of them and decide which one works the best for you and your stories. Good luck!

^_^ Congrats on writing so many books. I'm still working on my first one, although I'm on the fifth draft. It seems like you have really good reasoning for self-publishing. I can understand wanting to draw your own illustrations - although I don't think I have what it takes to design my own covers, and my own art is somewhat mediocre, so for me it would not be a huge sacrifice to let the publishers take care of it.

Good luck to you too! :D And good luck on getting your degree.

I've published two novels through amazon's self-publishing. right now they are only available in Kindle form until i can pay to have them published in paper.

Oh, congrats! :D

thanks. i also have one unoriginal book published. Kryptonite A-Z lol.

the original ones are Molten Kisses and Blood Storm.

My mother just finished her first book last year (I have yet to complete one myself) and she used Smashwords to self-publish! There's good things about all the options, but this worked best for us at the time. (I did the editing and the covers to save on costs.) Smashwords makes her book available on B&N, Amazon, and a few other places. That's both eBook and paperback format. We tried doing Amazon's Kindle Select (or is it Direct? It's one or the other), but under that you're only allowed to sell it on Amazon.

I only have known of Amazon and CreateSpace for self-publishing - I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there are actually a lot of options for it, but I didn't realize there would be, let alone an option that would sell your book through B&N. That's pretty cool!