The quest to be heard in a shrinking and competitive market place can be daunting, depressing but not without recourse. While I play the waiting game hoping my current project is picked up by someone I find myself investigating other ways to gain public visibility. Self publishing is not something new to me as I had a serial romance online for quite a few years. I used it as a learning tool and managed to get quite a readership going, even with a yahoo forum, usually used for complaints about the time between posts. It seems people want a weekly series to be uploaded daily. Despite my initial foray into self publishing I am loath to return there as the more I investigate it, the more I realise it has been flooded with everyone’s thoughts about anything. Often scorned as a place where people who can’t get representation go–I discovered some jewels among the dross. I considered that maybe some people don’t want to endure the hardship of continual rejection and just want to offer their work to an appreciative audience. Some such as Amanda Hocking have been very industrious and clever, as they market themselves into publishing contracts. The resources available to the author are as varied as the 156,000 results of a Google search for self publish. Some of the more used places out there include:
Having never used any of these services I cannot either reject nor support any but there is more than enough opinions floating around for the user to get information. Right now I would rather struggle with agent/publisher submissions, even move onto different work before giving up the ghost. At least there are alternates available if the dream ever appears to be fading away.
