To Get Published or To Self-Publish,That Is The Question

You've written a book. You want to publish it.  What do you do next?

Well, I know your joy and your pain. In 2009, I completed my first collection of short stories. It had been seven years since I began writing it. I wanted the world to read it. I wanted to be published. However, I was unsure what do next.

The process began in 2002 in an $800 a month, rent-control apartment in Santa Monica, California.  The window by my desk over-looked the intersection of 11th and Wilshire; traffic was noisy as were the drunks and occasional homeless people trying break into our place.  There was a popular Mexican restaurant called El Cholo across the street with a patio full patrons with margarittas in hand and a bar named J.P.'s next door with patrons who brought their beers to the sidewalk along with their cigarettes. 

Along the way, there had been a series of screenplays, including my thesis for graduate school. I had slowly developed my fiction in graduate class I had taken at U.S.C.  One short story that I wrote in my very first class with author, Susan Compo called "Tracks" became a film treatment and then I extended it to a screenplay. That original 18-page short story had the legs to go 120 pages on the screen. I was inspired to write more fiction - perhaps a whole collection.

By mid-2009, I had written twelve stories. I started submitting the manuscript to publishers all over the U.S. but it was met with a deafening radio silence. A few rejection letters and E-mails finally came back and my hope was dwindling.  I submitted  a few of the stories  to online journals and actually had three published.  By January 2010, I was starting to get desperate. I thought about self-publishing the collection but pride got the better of me. I had spent two years at U.S.C. earning my Master's degree in Professional Writing. I wanted to prove that I could find a small press somewhere in the U.S. to take my manuscript. Plus, it looked like I would have to pay to self-publish and with a growing family, I just didn't have the cash.

Then, in February 2010, my luck turned. I located a literary magazine online called Prick of the Spindle.  The publisher, Cynthia Reeser read HiStory of Santa Monica:Stories and contacted me about publishing as was in the process of opening Aqueous Books, a new small press in Pensacola, Florida. By May 2010, my book was published and listed on Amazon.com for sale. For the next five years, I enjoyed the prestige of being a published author - I sold books, had articles written about me, was interviewed on the radio, and was able to list my success on my professional resume. My dream of getting published had come true.

Then, in 2014, I got news that Cynthia, my publisher was shutting down her small press after five years. The book business is a challenge and let's face it: unless you are a big commercial publisher the profit margin can be a challenge. We had had a great author-publisher relationship - I was her first publication and she put 32 books after me. Incredible run. I will be eternally grateful for Cynthia's faith in my writing.

However, now I was on my own. My biggest fear was that my book would go out of print. After a congenial exchange, I was able to get the original galley from Cynthia and then connect with friend, Julie Titus of JT Formatting. She connected me with a business partner, Cassy Roop, who is a book jacket designer. By  early 2015, HoSM was back in print on CreateSpace.com. I was blown away with the quality of the paperback, which combined with the work of Julie and Cassy, was awesome. To this day, the product that produced blows away most of what I have seen on bookshelves out there by much larger publishing companies.

But then there was the case of my next book, HiStory of Santa Monica II: More Stories. Once again, like in 2009, I started to query presses. Anyone who had an interest threw out publication dates of 2018 or 2019! I'll be 45 years old next year and that thought of waiting that long to get traditionally published was shocking to me. I did some soul-searching and made the executive decision to publish it once again through CreateSpace.com.

In the end, I have no regrets about the publishing process.  I've gotten that offer to publish with a small press and I've done it on my own.  What should you do? I'd contact my team and have them help you get published.

About the author:
Michael J. Atwood is a graduate of the University of Southern California's prestigious Master of Professional Writing program and Boston College. He currently works as both a fiction and freelance writer in North Attleborough, Massachusetts but his full-time pursuit is as an English Language Arts teacher. He has written for a number of publications including The Boston Globe, Patriot Ledger, North Attleborough Free Press, and Attleboro Sun Chronicle.
In 2010, Aqueous Books published Atwood's first short story collection, HiStory of Santa Monica: Stories. The collection was a "minor-league" success selling many copies and is still available a number of bookstores across the U.S.. He is currently working on the pilot for a television series on Santa Monica as well as a dystopian teenage novel.

Formatter / Editor  :  Julie Titus

https://www.facebook.com/JTFormatting/

Designer : Cassy Roop