Oif. It’s been a busy couple of months here in the Swanson household. First, with the initial excitement of the Inkshares fantasy contest, then with the even bigger excitement of my first WorldCon. Both of these endeavors were stabs at kickstarting my writing career…and neither has gone off quite as well as I hoped it would. Granted, both were longshots. Still, its important to admit one’s defeats and move onto the next phase. Not only that, but both were valuable learning experiences.
WorldCon
MidAmericon II was an absolute blast. Sure, I went in all starry eyed thinking that I just might run into an editor who would want to hear the elevator pitch for Impervious, or just make some contacts in the industry. Don’t get me wrong. I met some awesome people, and met some excellent authors. Just no magical happenstance that put let me break straigh into the publishing industry. And really, I never expected that to happen.
What I did do was attend every panel that I could squeeze into my schedule without starving myself and dropping dead from exhaustion. I learned a ton of things that I didn’t know before. I attended a couple panels with agents and editors that will give me a big leg up when I’m ready to start shopping Impervious around in a draft or two. I attended a writing workshop that gave a rather staggering blow to my ego, but I have managed to recover from that.
WorldCon definitely put a lot of things in perspective, especially if I’m going to try and make a career out of this writing thing. I’m going to have to do more, be better and probably write a bunch more books a lot faster than I’m writing now. How I’m going to do that, I’m not sure…
Inkshares Contest
After a strong start in the first day, Impervious quickly fell off the top slots. I’ve gained a lot of followers over the course of the contest, but haven’t sold anywhere near the amount of books I’d need to win it, or to achieve the lower of the Inkshares goals that would get me an eBook. Granted, the contest still has thirty days to go, but unless Neil Gaiman or Brandon Sanderson points at my book and says make this happen, it isn’t going to happen on Inkshares.
And really, this isn’t the worst thing that could have happened. While I didn’t learn as much about this contest as I did from WorldCon, I have discovered one thing. I don’t want to go the Indie publishing route. It was fun for exactly one week, before I got tired of trying to think up interesting updates. And I have no desire whatsoever to email people individually to ask them to buy my book. Ugh… No…I have no stomach for doing my own marketing. This is something that I will gladly have some one else do on my behalf. Traditional publishing my be a harder road to walk…but I think its going to be the one that sees me writing more book and not tossing my hands up in frustration, trying to constantly drive people to my book listing on Amazon.com.
If you’re reading this and you’ve already pre-ordered a book, don’t worry. Inkshares will refund your money, probably in the first week of November. If you haven’t pre-ordered Impervious yet, and are wondering if you should…wait a bit. There probably won’t be another Inkshares contest in my future, but there will be other ways to support Impervious coming soon enough.
To everyone who pre-ordered. I can’t thank you enough. Your support has been awesome and even though it won’t be coming through Inkshares, Impervious will be in your hands soon…ish. Which will bring me right into my next blog entry which is going to be all about Impervious. Stay tuned! It’ll be coming soon.
(I promise. I wrote it as part of this blog entry but that just made this way too long and I like you guys. … Most of you guys. … … Yeah, most of you guys. And nobody wants to read THAT much on a book I haven’t completely finished yet.)