Way back in the mists of pre-internet time, I wrote a big traditional historical romance novel and made a half-assed attempt to interest publishers in it. I was in grad school, and the way-back way of doing this was time-consuming and expensive, so I didn’t put in much effort. Unsurprisingly, the book didn’t sell.
Fast-forward a couple of decades and self-publishing was an actual achievable thing, so I did it that way.
Even though that book never found an audience (for a lot of reasons, starting with the same old time and expense constraints) the experience was incredibly valuable. I’ve now been self-publishing for ten years and have over fifty novels and novellas to my name.
So why try a Traditional Publisher again? Well, because a) I think my books are good and b) I’m pretty sure it would help readers find me if I had at least one book out there from a TradPub.
I’ve submitted three times in the past couple years, all to the same imprint, which is known for inclusive romance. All my submissions were books I wrote to suit myself. None of them were unsuitable for the imprint, but they weren’t written to specific guidelines. Maybe not surprisingly, none of them were acquired.
But lo! I persist! Today I submitted a new book.
And I wrote this book specifically to submit it to this specific publisher. It’s written to guidelines, in other words, which was an interesting challenge and has resulted in a book I absolutely love.
I’ve read quite a few books from this particular publisher, so I had a sense of what they publish. We shall see if I did a good enough job fitting their profile.
If not, there’s one other publisher I’ll try (in case you didn’t know, there are very few traditional publishers who will consider un-agented submissions, and I don’t have an agent). And if that publisher also doesn’t acquire this book, I’ll publish it myself as usual. I’ll be happy to; I’m proud of it.
Curious? It’s a M/M holiday vacation forced-proximity opposites-attract romance about two men at career turning points. You might be hearing about it again within a few months. Watch this space. And in the meantime, how about this one?