Getting a book published

One of the most frustrating aspects of writing a novel has to be finding an agent.  You would think that after spending the time to dream up a great story with a strong plot line, great characters and a good ending (some authors just can’t seem to write an ending very well) that finding an agent and getting published would be the easy part.  WRONG!!  First off you have to find an agent who has an appetite for the genre you are writing about.  Fine, once that is done and you’ve compiled your list, you then have to find out how to get your material to them.  Here is where it gets fun.  Not literally, please hear the sarcastic inflection in my writing.  Some agents want you to send a query letter.  Trying to pare your novel down to a paragraph or two and expecting someone to really be able to judge your work from a query.  I don’t get it.  Pretty much don’t like the query letter process, but you have to play by the rules in the system that you are bound by.  So, you write a query letter.  Hi, my name is Blake…blah, blah, blah.  If you are a newer author, you know what I’m talking about.  Now you have to get it to the agent you are targeting.  Some like e-mail (my personal favorite) some like snail mail (not so much my favorite) which you have to include a SASE to get their response.  Now that the query has gone out, the waiting game begins.  The e-mail route usually gets the quickest response.  The frustrating part here is when you get a response saying, sorry, we’re not looking for this genre right now, even though their website says, hey, we’re looking for this genre.  So, I guess a pet peeve of mine is, I’m not looking to waste their time and I don’t want my time wasted either.  I wish they would update their info.  Let me clarify here a bit.  I only had three agents give me this response, not a ton, but still, that was wasted effort for me and frankly for them as well. 

Anyhoo, the point is, an agent may or may not see what you have to offer.  They may not be in the best mood when they receive your request or they have some minimum wage worker reading the mail and passing on what they like to their agent.  I’m here to make the agent money as well as myself.  I just want to get my book to the masses, since I don’t have the resources to put it out there.  So, if any of you know of a good agent, who is looking for an author who plans to write a minimum of two books a year in two separate genres (More releases, more money), please send them my way.

My primary genre is Science Fiction/Fantasy.  I’ve completed the first book in a trilogy and am dying to get this beauty published.  The current working title (not sure I’m 100% in love with it, by the way) is:  Dargon Rising.  I also have an epic fantasy series that I’m planning on writing as well, so here are at least six books ready to make an agent, plus myself, money over the next few years.

My second genre is Children’s/Young Adult.  Having two publishers allows you to have two books in print in a year.  For an author, that’s how you are going to survive and be able to pay the bills.  I’m currently working on my first book in a series for this genre.  The title is:  The Magic Helmet.  When I was in elementary school I started writing a story with this same title.  Reading that imaginative work has inspired me to dust the idea off and re-tool it for a more modern twist.  Put it this way, in that original book, the video games being discussed, were the stand up big boys, like Star Wars and Pac Man.  Now with PS3 and other platforms out there, plus the advances in technology, my characters are living large.

Alright, that’s enough for now.  I’ll be writing more later.  I appreciate any comments and feedback.  I’d love to hear the frustrations that you have gone through on a similar journey and what the end result was for you.

 

Thanks,

Blake