As a follow up to a recent entry, the publishing world is undergoing a paradigm shift, and people have many different option: seeking literary agents, mainstream publishing, independent presses, POD, eBooks, Kindle Direct, Kobo, Smashwords, and more. But one thing hasn't changed. If you feel strongly about your finished novel (or work of nonfiction), stand by it. If you don't believe in the work, no one else will.
There was an amazing documentary on PBS this past week about J. D. Salinger (part of their American Masters series). The New Yorker rejected him many times, and Catcher in the Rye was originally rejected by Henry Giroux at a prestigious New York publishing house. The novel was later acquired by Little Brown and Co. and sold sixty million copies. Virtually every famous and successful author was originally told that their work wouldn't sell. Herman Melville made $537 on Moby-Dick and died almost penniless.
As for Salinger, he wrote for forty years for himself, disdaining to publish. He simply believed in the act of writing and the integrity of his stories. He wasn't interested in what anyone else thought. Beginning in 2015, his literary estate will begin publishing his forty years worth of material--material that he believed in as he pounded on an old manual typewriter in his New Hampshire bunker.
All successful writing begins with a passion for the act of writing without thought of the outcome. It is a spiritual calling, trying to say what wants to be expressed. If you adopt this attitude each day as you sit at the keyboard, there is no such thing as failure.
~William Hammett
Contact wmhammett@aol.com
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