I’d forgotten how soul destroying this process can be. And I’m not even up to submitting my work yet. Nowhere near. For the last few weeks, I’ve been hunched over The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, looking up publisheers on the internet, making notes. I’ve a long list of publishers and information. But I’m still no nearer sending my work out then I was when I wrote the last blog post saying I was starting on this road. I know this is why people decide to self publish. It’s why I did all those years ago when I published Shattered Reflections.

One of the main problems is that anyone who looks remotely like they might suit me and my work is currently not open to submissions. It may be that this is not the best time to be trying to submit work. This may be due to lockdown and not working in the office. Or it may be (as someone suggested on Twitter) that they are snowed under with all the people who started writing during lockdown. Either way it is incredibly frustrating.

There are also a lot of publishers who, while claiming not to be vanity publishers, expect the writer to pay towards publication. I can’t afford to do this anyway but even if I could, I’d be dubious. The whole idea makes me feel uneasy. At least part of the point of publishing in a more traditional way is so that I don’t have to take the risk of potentially losing any money.

Another issue is the length of my manuscript. A lot of publishers set maximum length at 120000 words and Choose Yr Future is 158000 words. Quite a lot to lose. I’m not sure that I could make those sort of cuts even if I wanted to. I’ve already done what seems like a lot of hard work, getting it to where it is now. I don’t really want to start messing around with it again. It’s worth noting for the future though. I have a lot of half spun tales hanging waiting to be chosen for the next project.

So, the upshot is I’m no further forward but I’m not giving up. I’m determined not to go the self publishing route this time. I’m starting to look at agents instead of contacting publishers direct. I’m still searching for publishers which fit and are open for submissions. I must confess that patience isn’t really a virtue I possess but, for the minute, I’m sticking to this path.