Because I don’t know when to quit, I’ve pooled some money into working with publishing coaches. I have the query materials for two different books (Voyagers and Prodigies) out to two different publishing coaches.

To give you the idea of how publishing coaches work, I have to explain what query materials are. Think of them as a promotional/sales packet for the book. This packet — a cover letter, a professional bio of one paragraph, a two-page (usually) synopsis, and the first so many pages of the novel, provides the agent enough information to ask for the whole novel to read or reject it. (I am not convinced that it really provides the agent enough information, but I’m not an agent).

So the agents are going to start by helping me revise the query materials. I don’t know if it’s the query materials, to be honest. I’m a pretty good writer. On the other hand, I am really bad at self-promotion. Ok, I’ll qualify this — I have done well promoting my work in my career as a professor. When it comes to creative writing, I’m more like “oh hai, could you read my stuff and tell me I’m a writer?”

I don’t know what happens afterward. If it’s self-publishing, I’m missing some of the things that make for self-made success: A published author who will vouch for me, previous published books, a lot of friends who will read my book and like it … I hope there are alternatives for me because realistically, I don’t have these. Maybe I should just put my book on Amazon and let it languish, because at least I’ll have closure. (That sounded bitter. I didn’t mean to sound bitter, whoever’s reading this.)

Of course, I don’t know what the publishing agents have to tell me. I need to stay optimistic.

I’ll let you know.