My Dream

My dream has been becoming a reality now for about seven years. As we find out during the process of becoming adults our dreams don't sail over the sea of reality and take us away to a mystical land, but they kind of crash into the shore. I had no idea how long or difficult it would be to publish a book, and I still don't know how hard it is to make a living off of being a writer.
I do know that it is almost impossible to make a living being a server and a delivery driver while trying to publish a novel, and I am glad that this stage is over. This new stage is where the excitement happens, it's where I have worked my ass off and all possibilities finally have there chance. I don't have an excessive amount of money to push my dream, but I do have an excessive amount of determination to pull it.
I had challenged my roommates to a novel writing contest whilst watching the first Harry Potter movie. It was that night that I wrote the first line of my book, and I knew at that moment I was going to have to finish it. My other roomies declined the contest, unfortunately; they would have written great novels.(well at least good ones) From that day on, it came every time I had a free moment. It came and defied my chronic fatigue, my loneliness, it came with something that I hadn't had in a long time, it came with love.
For three years I went back and forth with my friend Rachel, who was just learning to be an editor, and we taught each other how to do our jobs. She helped me edit it face to face, about three chapters at a time, and my skill improved so that I could put talent and creativity together. I loved having someone to talk to face to face as I wrote the next chapter, someone who couldn't wait to know what happens next, that, more than anything helped give me energy to write.
So then I graduated and moved to Asheville, ready to start sending off manuscripts. I assumed that it would be arduous, and that eventually I would get a small or mid-sized publisher to pick me up. Little did I know how rare this was becoming. Between small publishers being bought out left and right, and the internet changing the world of books, getting published as a first time fantasy author was next to impossible. I sent out over a hundred manuscripts about ten at a time, waited about two months and then sent the next ten, ect. Then there was also sending manuscripts out on the web, which accounted for about another hundred manuscripts. From the forty percent of publishers I actually heard back from, about half were automated letters. The other half were very encouraging, but no real bites. This was horribly disheartening. Every week there were a handful of letters rejecting my dream, after a while it wore me down.
I finally heard back from a publisher who was interested in publishing my book, I went back and forth with them for a while, but in the end they wanted to change too much, including the title. This was when I realized the harsh reality, I was going to have to self-publish. The illusion of instantly "making it" had died, but at least the manuscript struggle was over with. Research began, analyzing publishers, cost per book and quality of the print, what kinds of promotions they offered, ect.
So then I signed with a self-publisher. Let me warn you three people reading this, it is expensive!!! I wish I had known earlier how much it was going to cost so that I could have spent more time getting a well paying job and saved up cash instead of sending off manuscripts and then expecting the self-publish process to go fast. It took about one and a half years, for everything, and only three or so months was me not having enough dough, most of it was editing (a second time) and setting up the small nuances that everyone who has never worked on a book takes for granted. The table of contents, the chapter styles, pictures, cover art, back cover, page numbering (which can be tricky apparently) page inflection, cover textuuuuuure, and many other things I cannot recall.
This almost catches me up. The only thing left is the promo, well I shouldn't say only. The deadly, fire-breathing, three-headed dragon that remains guarding the gold riches that is the ability to subsist being a writer, remains. It is not what most artist would consider their trade, advertisement to them has typically been the enemy. Now, there are plenty of ways to advertise a book, but which ones will work is the question. Well, which ones will work and won't bankrupt me in case they don't work. I came up with a few low cost ideas myself, including the email campaign, which may be working or might not be... it seems like it might be a little less successful than I had hoped, but tis okay. It seems that book buying is one art that people always want to be face to face with. Online book buying is painful, you can't hold it in your hands and feel its selected texture, or flip around the cream pages and here that perfect sound. I could be wrong though, maybe it will be successful, but it is only one of about five things of personal low-cost promo that I will do.
Other than that there is the internet push, which you must rely on hits to work, and trust the program you order is worth the ridiculous price you are paying for it. I am testing the waters of this and talking to other authors about its success. I have ordered one of the minor plans, so we shall see how interworthy the book is. Then there are the typical pushes, very very tough for a self-published person in many ways. There is the radio, expensive to get on and almost impossible to land. There are print reviews, which I hope to get at least in the indie papers of Charlotte, Asheville, and Raleigh, but more than that is going to be very tough. There are book shows, which I have acquired a knight's costume for, but they will be slightly expensive and tedious, not to mention getting off work and driving to them. Then there are book clubs, very hard to contact usually, but I think I have a way, and I am going to hit them up as best I can.
That's pretty much the description of the three-headed dragon that which breathes fire. It is impossible; not literally, it is just a reference to a samuari jack episode, my favorite samjack sode. It is about this seemingly impossibly difficult mountain that truth lies at the top of, and Jack tries to get to the top. I keep going back to it to motivate myself to get to the top of the mountain, even if it seems impossible.
So, with that said, any ideas or help is always appreciated, but I climb this mountain alone. We shall see if I get to the top, hopefully in this lifetime because this series is gonna be killer. That, and I have to do what I love to keep from driving myself in in in sane sane. Either way I will write, I just hope I can again soon. This break is drying me up! So, god speed promo!!