I previously maintained a blog which I called Hawking Up Hairballs. In it, I wrote about anything that struck me as worthy of comment. In this one, I’m going to confine myself to books and writing. What has occasioned the initiation of this blog at this time is my decision to publish my novel “Buster Bungle’s Big Top” as a Kindle ebook.
I would, of course, liked to have brought my book out with a mainstream publisher. I can’t hope to match their resources in terms of publicity and distribution, but I had no success there. They only accept agented submissions, and though I sent out over eighty query letters, not a single agent asked to see my manuscript. That was frustrating. It would be one thing if someone read my manuscript and rejected it because it wasn’t what he or she wanted, but no one even wanted to read the damn thing. It left me feeling helpless. I can understand the agents’ position though. As one of them pointed out on his web site, he receives several hundred query letters a week and he can only accept a few actual manuscripts for consideration.
I suppose I could have kept trying and trying, but I’m not a young man and I want to get my work out there. There are other ebook publication options than Kindle, but Amazon’s the big boy on the block, so that’s where I’m starting. Wish me luck!
Chuck Oliveros 