A dual strategy

I got a wonderful five-star review of Panthera : Death Spiral this week, and it occurred to me that my presence as a writer on Amazon is beginning to look respectable.

The Panthera books have never been offered to any agent or editor.  When I wrote them I always intended to self-publish them.  At the time I made this decision I'd had enough of being rejected by mainstream editors and agents.  I had amassed so many responses that said "your writing is good, but I can't sell it" that I decided to see if I could sell my work.  I wanted to road-test my writing and see what readers outside my immediate circle of supportive writer friends said about it.

Publishing in paperback means that I have something physical to show for all my scribbling.  I have a professionally-produced product that I can thrust at people.  I have a work up on the Amazon website  that I cay say to people to Look Inside before they rubbish my self-published work.  Read it first, then make up your mind,  and  the feedback I've received so far has been very positive.  

Now I've had this validation of my writing I'm swinging back to the idea of wanting a mainstream contract.  But self-publishing has changed the balance of power.  If I'm asked to make changes to the  book that totally change it in ways I can't live with then I'm prepared to walk away.  I'm no longer desperate about getting a mainstream contract.  It has to be the right one.  If editors and agents don't like my work they can no longer block my access to readers.  I can reach them directly by self-publishing.  

But of course, being signed by a mainstream publisher is still an important validation of a work.  And the chance to be publicised by a publisher's publicity machine is not to be sneezed at.  So I will be making more mainstream submissions while I continue to self-publish.  Panthera : Death Song, the second book in the series, is being copy-edited now, and I'm half-way through writing Panthera : Death Plain, the third book in the series,  I have twenty other novels sitting on my shelf to choose from, so I can try different ones in different places.

Pursuing a dual strategy feels right to me now.  I'm out there as an author already, with good reviews of my books and a social media presence.  But a mainstream contract would add another layer of validation to that, and I suspect a dual strategy like this might well be the norm for authors in the future.