Many Paths

When I first started writing I dreamed of getting 'the call' and being offered a significant advance by one of the big traditional publishers. I did get a call from a medium-sized publisher once. It was very exciting as was receiving that first advance check. But the publisher world is constantly changing and evolving. Now there are many more paths to being a successful writer than one like my original dream.

That traditional route is still there and some find it and the advance. Many more writers are finding success with small presses. From previous posts you know I'm a big fan of those and work with three different small presses.

More and more writers are finding their niche by self-publishing. It takes a willingness to work and learn a few new things but there's a lot of advice and how-to information available if you want to take that route.

But the evolving publishing world has opened opportunities that just weren't there in the old traditional model. Novellas were virtually unheard of before the eBook. Some were included in anthologies but those weren't near as popular as they are now in the digital age. Now publishers and self-publishers can offer those 15-20K stories digitally at a price readers think is fair.

Collaborative writing is so much easier in this day and age. I've seem lots more of it than ever before. Serial writing is another form of story-telling that benefits from the digital age. Writers can offer their book in segments.

Another thing that has changed with the emergence of successful small publishers and self-publishing is that reissuing of older titles. In my case, that medium publisher who gave me my first advance changed the focus of their company and threw me and most of their authors of genre fiction under the bus. But I recently found a small publisher willing to take on that fantasy series and reissue it. In another example a romance novel I had with a small publisher had a really poor sales record. I took back my rights and convinced my other romance publisher to reissue it. In the old days that would never have happened.

Finding a publisher for poetry has always been a challenge but again the digital age has created a massive array of opportunities for poets to get their work to readers. So though we often complain a bit about how quickly the industry is changing, most of it is for the good of writers.

What did I miss in my roundup of pathways to success? Would you ever do collaborative writing or a publish your novel as a serial? Have you ever had a book reissued?