#rogermantis

“As young Roger McGillicutty awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. Aw, jeez! he thought.”

These are the first sentences of the hilarious middle grade novel, ROGER MANTIS: The Remarkable Metamorphosis of Roger McGillicutty by Tom Alan Brosz. If they sound familiar, they should! The inspiration from these lines comes from the famous opening line of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

What is your favorite opening line in a novel?

Tom Alan Brosz’s favorites are:

“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” —The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”  —1984 by George Orwell

“The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel.” —Neuromancer by William Gibson.

Want to read more about the transformation of Roger McGillicutty? Pick up a copy of ROGER MANTIS: The Remarkable Metamorphosis of Roger McGillicutty at Amazon, B&N, or Indiebound.

This week on #writingwednesday: 

Tom Brosz, author of ROGER MANTIS: THE REMARKABLE METAMORPHOSIS OF ROGER MCGILLICUTTY, offers valuable insight for potential authors by comparing his experiences with self-publishing to publishing through a small press like Month9Books.

Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing: the State of the Art

I have experience both with self-publishing a book (Castle Falcon), and having one published by a traditional publisher (Roger Mantis).

There are pros and cons on both sides, but the industry in both areas has changed a lot, just in recent years.

Self-Publishing

I followed a fairly standard course with my first book, Castle Falcon. I submitted it to agents and publishers, never really considering self-publishing at all.

After over a hundred rejections, and a couple of experiences with agents that didn’t pan out, I got the rights back and decided to try doing it myself.

In the past, self-publishing was an expensive proposition. You had to get your book edited and formatted properly for a paper book. Then you had to print up a large supply of copies at your own expense, and try to get them distributed to stores.

Fortunately, the technology changed by the time I was ready to go. Amazon, among other outlets, offered simple methods for publishing both e-books and paperbacks and putting them up for sale at their websites. Basically an advanced Print on Demand (POD) operation, no book inventories were needed. The cost of the process for the actual publishing was basically zero.

I did have to create a properly-formatted PDF for the paperback, and a Word file to convert to Epub and Kindle e-book formats. I already had computer tools in hand like Photoshop for cover design, rendering programs for artwork, InDesign for paperback layout, and some experience from producing a hardcover gift book version of Castle Falcon at Lulu.

So, in 2012 I published an e-book version on Amazon and other outlets. This was followed by the Amazon Createspace paperback version.

It’s even easier now to publish a book on Amazon and other sites. Createspace and Kindle Direct Publishing have merged into one operation for both e-book and paperback production. To get an e-book up for sale, as far as the technology is concerned, all you need is a decent cover and a properly-edited Word document. It’s not much more difficult for paperbacks, with available templates for formatting in Word. But producing the book wasn’t the hard part. Selling it was.

I had no marketing chops, or the money for a serious campaign. Many reputable reviewers weren’t interested in self-published work, never mind stores and libraries. I had little or no internet presence, other than a website for the book and a following of friends and relatives on Facebook. I got a few reviews, good ones, but the book never got the attention it needed to get going. Like many other self-published books which are turned out in huge numbers every year, it’s basically been languishing on Amazon.

Traditional publishing

In 2011, while I was still working with an agent on Castle Falcon, I wrote a quick middle-grade book just to see if I could do it. Loosely based on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, I explored the humor of an eleven-year-old boy who wakes up one morning as a five-foot praying mantis.

The agent had no interest in Roger Mantis, so with permission I fired it off to other agents and publishers. Much later, in the fall of 2015, after 78 rejections, and long after I’d parted ways with the agent, I sold it directly to Month9Books.

Traditional publishing was a new experience. There were contracts to deal with, new lessons to learn, and an opportunity to work with other people skilled in the field.

Editing is a big feature of having a publisher (many agents do editing, too). It took a long time to work through my book to bring it to what the publisher wanted to sell, with a lot of patience and back-and-forth. Each time, the quality improved.

The covers were done professionally, and the book (after some unavoidable delays) finally went to market in April of 2019.

The marketing was better than what I could do, with internet exposure, reviews, and most importantly, access to a real distribution system without having to price the book out of bounds. With a traditional publisher, I also have a much better shot at things like foreign and movie rights.

I’m hoping for better success this time around, but it’s still too early to tell.

Like self-publishing, traditional publishing isn’t what it used to be, either. Some years ago, your choices were mostly large, established publishers, usually in New York. If you didn’t have an agent, you were mostly out of luck.

Today, the list of publishers is much larger, with a lot more small companies in the mix. This has pros and cons.

On the plus side, you have more opportunities to get someone to publish your book. Many smaller publishers are more willing to take a shot at a new writer, and often aren’t as rigid about writers submitting without agents. With fewer writers in their stables, a small publisher might give a new writer more personal attention than a big publisher.

On the minus side, a small publisher has fewer resources for things like marketing and support. Advances are usually not large. Limited personnel means they may have no choice but to be very selective on where they expend their efforts. With luck, you’re on the good side of this, but in some cases it’s possible to find yourself almost as badly stranded on the marketing end as if you’d self-published. To be fair, large publishers have also been known to put newer writers on the shelf while concentrating on their profitable known writers.

 What next?

So what’s the best road if you have a book you want to publish?

There’s no right or wrong answer. My own rule of thumb is still giving agents and publishers the first shot at a new manuscript, and don’t give up on that after only a few rejections.

After that? See what you can do with self-publishing. Why not? In my opinion, a book with its own Amazon page, and at least some access to the public (even if it isn’t exactly busting sales figures), is a lot better than a book at the bottom of a file drawer.

Reviewers and others are more tolerant of self-published books today (although traditionally-published books still have an easier time in many places). But it’s still hard. Producing the book and putting it up for sale on the internet is the easiest part. Selling it after that is where things get difficult.

Remember, the important thing is to do something. Too many authors revise forever, putting off the publishing decision. This is almost as bad as a book in a file drawer.

Get your work polished, go out and try, and don’t let rejections stop you. Remember, you have more choices than there used to be.

Check out Roger Mantis from Tom Brosz, which came out in April from Tantrum Books/Month9Books!