iUniverse and the publishing path of the novel A Perfect Blindness
Part 1
When I decided I wanted to write a book back in high school, there were two ways to get a book into print. The traditional path, which was serpentine and slow, essentially required two gate keepers to say yes: either an agent or some unknown reader who, after pulling a random manuscript from a slush pile, gave it a thumbs up; then, an editor needed to say yes, all of which involved chronic waiting and receipt of very many preprinted rejection slips. Once inside a publishing house, the manuscript got whipped into shape by various editors giving it assorted edits, and still other people proofreading it, and a design team making the cover and interior look good: this all on the publisher’s dime. Then the publisher printed a bunch up and the author helps them try to sell it. Slow and unlikely, but the legitimate path.
Then there was self-publishing, a.k.a. vanity publishing, something sad old people did with their life savings to show they’d really had a book in them after all, or rich kids whined their parents into paying for. In other words, the illegitimate path, which was shameful, no matter that Dickens self-published A Christmas Carol or that Marcel Proust self-published Swann’s Way. This was a path I would never take.
Yet, never has come to pass.
Primarily because self-publishing has changed so completely from the vanity publishing I grew up sneering at.
The following series of blog posts will chronicle not only my change of heart and the reasons for same, but the actual journey the novel A Perfect Blindness has taken along this path, including all my doubts, the various set backs, and small joys that have happened along the way. The book is on schedule for an April, 2017 release, and the second round of proofs will be delivered later today, April 3rd. The cover proofs will go tomorrow. Then, there is a final signoff and launch.
May it do well.
So, how did it get this far? What made my change my mind about self-publishing?