{"id":10861,"date":"2024-02-09T11:02:53","date_gmt":"2024-02-09T16:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/?p=10861"},"modified":"2026-02-24T13:51:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T18:51:12","slug":"the-cult-of-traditional-publishing-part-3-what-do-you-really-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/the-cult-of-traditional-publishing-part-3-what-do-you-really-want\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cult of Traditional Publishing Part 3: What do you really want?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Write
Write drunk. Edit sober.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

People want different things from writing a book. The first step you must take is to ask yourself: \u201cWhat do I<\/em> want?\u201d and actually get to the rock bottom of the truth.<\/p>\n

For many people, that is difficult. Too difficult. Some people (me) only get halfway there, but I freely admit I don\u2019t know what I want most of the time.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

So there I was with my cursor perpetually on the SEND button sending my manuscript out to real<\/em> agents and publishers (not those poseur ebook<\/em> publishers) and getting nowhere<\/em>. Meh, I don\u2019t blame the early rejections. My blurb sucked and so did my beginning (which I rewrote) and my tag line was apparently only appropriate for my blog.<\/p>\n

\"Religion.
obligatory clever tagline<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I retooled and sent out another round. Meanwhile, I saw that an in-real-life critique group friend I\u2019d had back in the day and had gotten published by her chosen publisher was talking up ebooks. Well. If she<\/em> had no problem with it, maybe I should just peek. One night, after another long shift of medical transcriptioning, I decided to browse the poseur ebook<\/em> publishers.<\/p>\n

I found one whose blurb was satisfactory, so I bought it and read it. It was good. It was really<\/em> good. I bought another one from a different ebook publishing house. Also good. A third, from a third ebook publishing house. Excellent, in fact.<\/p>\n

Allrightythen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After another spate of flat rejections, I started sending it to ebook publishers. Lo and behold, I got one rather complimentary rejection with several suggestions I implemented immediately. I got a couple of other complimentary rejections, and a few more. People liked<\/em> it, but they didn\u2019t know what it was<\/em>, precisely, or what to call <\/em>it.<\/p>\n

That was encouraging, but it was still a wall. At least I knew I could still write.<\/p>\n

Yet I despaired and my husband finally said (quite innocently) (it was cute), \u201cWhy don\u2019t you publish it yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n

That sparked the REEEEist REEEE that ever was REEEEd.<\/p>\n

YOU CAN\u2019T DO THAT! IT\u2019S NOT ALLOWED!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And that would make me no better than Judy the MT.<\/em><\/sup><\/p>\n

He was completely confused. \u201cYou publish your cross-stitch patterns. You already have the skills to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

THAT\u2019S DIFFERENT!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I REEEEd for days.<\/p>\n

The problem was \u2026 in between those very complimentary rejections and the odd editorial suggestion here and there, I was fiddling with covers and doing the typesetting to create a pretty galley. I kept that part to myself. It was my dirty little secret because yes, I did<\/em> have the chops to do it myself, I didn\u2019t trust what a publisher would do with it, so I\u2019d already begun in the hopes I could say, \u201cYeah, hey, uh \u2026 could you use this cover? And this typesetting?\u201d2<\/a><\/sup> I was halfway out the door of my church, but I was afraid of the heat I\u2019d take.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, do you want people to read it?\u201d Dude asked me.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen put it out there. Who\u2019s it going to hurt?\u201d<\/p>\n

MY FEELINGS! MY PRIDE! WHAT IF THEY DON\u2019T LIKE IT? WHAT IF THEY SAY MEAN THINGS ABOUT ME ON THE INTERNET?! WHAT IF SIMON & SCHUSTER WANTS TO DESTROY MY CAREER?! REEEEEEEEEEEEE<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Then. Then<\/em>. THEN.<\/p>\n

He used The Words on me.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemind me who said, \u2018The question is not \u2018Who\u2019s going to let me?\u2019 The question is \u2018Who\u2019s going to stop me?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

I should never have given him Rand.<\/p>\n

\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n

NOTE
2025-08-25:<\/strong>
The second half of this post is a how-to and I decided to make it its own post. I\u2019ll post the link here once I\u2019ve cleaned it up a bit.<\/p>\n

\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n

\n
Part 1<\/a> | Part 2<\/a> | Part 4<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

1<\/a>.<\/span>   What I want is to sit on my ass in a lovely home I don\u2019t have to clean so I can spend my time writing or reading and codding around on the internet, not having to worry about money. I want to travel well and when I am doing none of the above, I want to play golf (yes really). But no self-respecting libertarian likes to admit they just want to be aimless with no money worries.<\/p>\n

2<\/a>.<\/span>   You know that point in a job you hate when you\u2019re calling in all the time because you hate it but you haven\u2019t yet figured out that you should probably just quit? But you don\u2019t? Because you\u2019re kind of afraid to because you don\u2019t have another gig lined up yet? No? Just me?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[569,476,530,592,424],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-da-rulez","category-musings","category-self-publishing","category-the-cult","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10861"}],"version-history":[{"count":51,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23916,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861\/revisions\/23916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}