Worst Fears by Paul Edward Fitzgerald
Worst Fears Cont.
By
Paul Edward Fitzgerald
Upon visiting their website, however, you find
Random House, Harper Collins, and assortment of
big established presses are exactly who doesn’t
want your unsolicited masterpiece. Rather they
will horn in on the action post-success, it seems,
or after you’ve gotten an agent who can sell the
hell out of your work.
A smaller press is the next option. But before you
can send in your manuscript you realize you have
to do intensive research on many of these smaller
publishing companies to avoid corruption, scams,
and plagiarism; a surprisingly common
occurrence, you’ll find through this nifty research.
You also have to be sure you aren’t accidentally
signing with a vanity press who is just going to
charge you to distribute your book.
Oh, and don’t forget the author platform! You
have to have that in today’s day and age of social
media that rules mankind. Yeah, you may suck at
Twitter. But you can hire someone to help with
that; a P.A. or promotional expert. You’ll eventually
need them any- way for marketing whichever way
you go, because even if you publish with a small
press, they are a small press; their budget and re-
sources for promotion aren’t as big as Harper
Collins. You’ll have to pitch in to get your book
out there or hire someone to do it for you.
But...That means more money... More time...More
work.
Anyone who thinks becoming a writer is a choice
made be- cause you don’t like work or you wish to
somehow be rich and famous instantaneously is,
without mincing words, a complete and utter
moron who clearly doesn’t understand what a
financial, physical, mental, and emotional
investment the entire process of trying to be a
successful writer is.
To do things correctly and be taken seriously, you
have to go all in and treat it seriously as you
would any job. If anything you have to treat
writing more seriously than you would most jobs.
Again, to take your work seriously a financial
investment is a definite. And you are spending
money you don’t know you’ll ever make back.
Which comes to the emotional and mental strain
of knowing how you are one in a million who may
never
actually be noticed by anyone at all. In fact, the
odds are stacked in favor of you becoming an
utter failure. At least the odds of becoming as
financially secure or achieving the notoriety of
James Patter- son or Danielle Steele is pretty slim.
And that is something you have to wrestle with
daily.
That is on top of the depression, anxiety, and self-
doubt you have anyway as a sensitive artist, as
most writers like myself are. Also coupled with the
physical exhaustion of the hours put into your
writing, editing, building a platform, learning all
you can from who you can, making contacts, and
trying to maintain everything including a second
job if you have one, it’s any wonder anyone would
do what people like me and other emerging
writers are trying to do.
Most days I struggle to re- member why I am
doing it when I look at it in such a harsh light as I
often tend to do when a story I put my heart and
soul into needs more work or a magazine I really
wanted to be in states my work is not
commercially accessible through their venue. It’s
a crushing, tiring, and unstable line of work to
choose to pursue.