May 03 2009
Finishing the Job
I started this website to market a superhero novel I was writing three years ago. 150,000 readers, 6000 hours of writing and editing, 1100 articles, 35 months, four query drafts, three trolls, two changes of genre and one manuscript later… I finally sent a nonfiction proposal to a literary agent today.
If that goes well, I will probably find an agent and a publisher within several months. Then the hard stuff begins. Hopefully you will be able to buy a copy of Don’t Forget the Death-Ray! How to Write Superhero Novels and Comic Books within a year.
Have I mentioned that getting published is pretty hard?
I thought that was 2 changes of gender for a moment, there… now that would be an angle on which to market your novel. (I wrote chapters 12, 24 and 32 as a woman so I could better understand the feminine point-of-view). 😉
Good luck.
Best of luck!
So will the site stay up?
Definitely. However, getting published will affect the website in several ways.
1. I will probably post less frequently after I get published. I won’t have the time or energy to continue to put 40-60 hours a week into this when I have a full-time job. (A lot of authors have the misconception that they can relax as soon as a publisher signs the contract with them. Unfortunately, that is utterly wrong).
2. I’ve already posted 20,000 words of my book’s 50,000 words here. When I get published, my publisher might ask me to remove that online content. I’ll try to convince them that showcasing my material will help promote sales, but I will respect their wishes if that’s the way they’d like to proceed.
3. I will leave more and more of my comment-editing to volunteer moderators. I haven’t started any of that yet, but I expect that editors will be doing most of the editing by July and all of it by the time I sign a publishing deal.
Best of luck! I’m happy to see your book in the bookshelves within a year, but sad because you won’t have time to maintain the website.
Great job! I’m definitely buying your book (No one will stop me – not even my parents this time!).
– Wings
Cool.I’ll look out for it.
Gasp! It’s a member of Anonymous, come to spread the word of 4chan and /b/!
Congratulations and good luck, I’ll certainly be buying a copy 🙂
Hey, look at you big guy. Making your way up the ladder. Hopefully, I’ll see you up at the top then I can push you back down. 😉
Seriously, best of luck. I’m really happy for you.
I’m cheering you on. I’ll certainly try to pick up a copy if I see one (or there’s always Amazon).
Even though most of us already know what the book entails, I’ll possibly pick one up. I don’t have much spending money besides what I find and beg for and street-perform for (I street-performed once, one of the funnest things ever, I earned 30 buck for doing some crappy monologues).
$30 for monologues!?! Damn, I need to get out of writing. So far, I’ve made about $1 per hour, probably less after I factor in the time I spend reading and editing comments. Then again, I think that will jump considerably if I get published.
Congrats! Good luck!