I’ve decided to withdraw my manuscript from querying agents, as I am going to self-publish this novel.
There are a variety of reasons for this decision, that I’ll explore below.
The biggest is that I had an idea of collaborating with my father, a semi-retired professional artist, on the cover design and art. I don’t know how much longer he’s going to want to do this sort of thing, so I didn’t want to wait any longer. I think we can create a cool, fun, lasting memento together. Creating your own cover is not really an option with traditional publishing, so I’m back to self-publishing. I can always make another run at traditional publishing on a later work.
I started writing novels as a hobby, and there’s not a particularly strong incentive (right now) to pursue this as a career. I suspect that doing this job, plus my day job, and everything else in my life, will be unnecessarily strenuous. I love writing, and it’s fun, but I can see where pushing it too hard may drag it from creative outlet to obligation. I’m going to let it slip a little more back toward hobby for now.
I also think that in some ways, my writing benefits more from the freedom afforded my by self-publishing. It also opens up a bunch of fun ideas, such as creating a “trailer” for my manuscript as though it was a movie, or experimenting with doing my own audiobook version. The world of traditional fiction publishing may just not be the best fit for me and my creations right now.
Last, I made a weird rookie mistake with this manuscript that might not be consequential, but has hung over this book since I began querying: I submitted a copyright for my manuscript. For a new writer, copyrighting your work seems obvious, as you’ve put countless hours into your intellectual property. The truth is, you’re already (mostly) protected by copyright law, and your amazing ideas are really just not that valuable anyway. The problem with submitting an official copyright is that if you do get picked up by a publisher, you’ll have to transfer that copyright, and someone will have to pay for it. Given how difficult and fraught the process is to get traditionally published, the last thing you need is an extra roadblock.
Stay tuned! I’m planning on posting some preliminary ideas or designs for the cover art as they develop.
Jonathan Mann 