It\’s finally time to the thing I told myself I was gonna do many times before, far too long ago.
Attempts at publishing Renna\’s Crossing through traditional means seem to have run their course. I don\’t recall the exact number, and I don\’t have the spiritual fortitude to pop open a new tab and check, but I believe my current number of literary agent rejections/no answers stands at around a healthy 120. I\’m really not sure if that number\’s at all usual for people trying to publish for the first time, or if it\’s an indicator of abject failure, or if it\’s not nearly enough. Objectivity has tumbled out onto the side of the road way long ago.
But I promised myself and something more than myself that this book would be published, in some form. I\’ve been working with an editor to get it ready for eyes other than mine, and to be honest I\’ve run of out of stalling time. It\’s time to do the hard work, the unpleasant work, the work that\’s important but makes me feel tired and scratchy inside. Maybe those are the feelings of exposing your creative endeavors to others who neither know or care what it took to produce. All you can do is hope that someone, or maybe even a few people, take the time to check it out and maybe have some feelings from the words you wrote.
Anyway, these journal entries are meant to chronicle the process of self-publishing my 105k contemporary fantasy YA novel, Renna\’s Crossing. They will serve as a factor of accountability for my publication efforts, and perhaps provide some insight or guidance for other people following a similar creative path.
I\’ve sent off an email to a contact my editor has at the print-on-demand publishing services provider Bookmobile. I\’m hoping to get a quote and see if their typesetting and cover art services would fall within my remaining budget. I probably have unreasonably high expectations for the kind of graphic design I\’d like to have associated with this book, and it will mean a lot of scouring tumblr to find someone whose art resonates with me in just the right way (and then hoping that they\’re available for commission).
I don\’t feel like writing too much more right now, so I\’ll leave it at that, and update when I hear back from Bookmobile, or get lucky in my searches for a designer.
— Nagi