Tired of waiting for traditional publishers to respond? Life is just too short!

by Tina Field Howe
(Corning, NY USA)

Snailsworth, a slow little story.

I submitted my children's picture book - Snailsworth, a slow little story - to a traditional publisher that claimed to respond within a month. Six months later, the ms. came back with a rejection slip. Since I had prototyped the book and tested it with many parents and children, I knew I had a winner, so I used a local graphics company who did an outstanding job of printing it for me.

I began to sell my book at bookstores and local author events, which was a fine way to start; but I needed more exposure. It's difficult for independent writers/publishers to get their books listed with major on-line booksellers, but I remained hopeful.

Then I wrote a young adult novel - Alysa of the Fields, Book One in the Tellings of Xunar-kun - and decided from the start that I would not look for a traditional publisher. It's becoming more and more difficult for new writers to find publishers to take them on or agents to represent them...unless they're a celebrity, wink-wink.

Enter BookLocker.com, a POD (print on demand) that had all the right stuff: working one-on-one with the publisher, professional printing, low cost, and book listings on all major online booksellers. Perhaps the best thing about BookLocker is their exclusiveness: If a book's not ready to print, if it's written poorly, it is rejected. That's why BookLocker has a good reputation in the self-publishing/POD world.

In the year after I published the novel, BookLocker started offering color interior printing...so now both Snailsworth and Alysa are getting great exposure.

At first I felt odd about going to a POD - but the printing press was invented for a reason; so that anybody could publish. Just because traditional publishers have become so powerful, this does not mean that a writer's words should not be made available without their approval.

I say that true freedom of the press has returned, and I'm not ashamed to be using a POD. I may submit the books to traditional publishers at some point, which is always an option. But with the availability of POD...why bother?

Authors must keep in mind, however, that they must produce the best writing they can, to entertain and inform readers, to take them on a journey that they would otherwise miss out on.

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