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Nothing cures arrogance like the writing industry. Recently, I published my novel on Amazon Kindle, and that was after a year of struggling with every large press in the country.
This is my book:
It's called "The Almshouse." It's an ebook on Kindle and tells the story of a little girl investigating a decade old tragedy. The school she went to used to be an almshouse, only the place burned down thirteen years before the start of the story and took with it all the people inside. The main cast consists mostly of ghosts, and they serve as the witnesses that the girl must interview.
Publishing the book was probably the lengthiest project I've pursued to date. The writing process took about a year, but the "getting it to the presses" process took even longer. The trouble with the publishing industry is that it's somewhat tautological. As with most industries, it cares more about the products than the people who create them, and routine entails blowing off the thousands of aspiring authors to encourage the established one like Stephen King and John Grisham to churn out moneymakers as fast as their fingers can type. In short, no one wants to publish you until you've been published, and you can't publish until someone publishes you.
I wish I could say I kicked multiple behinds the first time around, but the process handed me my hat on a daily basis for six months. Imagine pouring a hundred hours into a painting or project, only to have the "gatekeepers" tell you your work isn't worth the paper it's printed on. This happens to every aspiring author, but the ones still in the industries are the ones who dropped their ego enough to save their books. Some do get defensive when confronted with criticism, and I can't say I blame them. A good friend of mine withdrew from a publisher's contest after being told her work was "cliche." Personally, I've collected enough rejections to make a miniature version of the Washington Monument, and frankly, around Christmas, I intend to do so.
Some aspiring authors have called this a form of 'cyberbullying", especially when large presses use their money and power to push their products past that of their competitions', but I'm afraid that's a misuse of the word. It's more of a learning experience. Unless you count snacks, few things in life are handed over pre-packaged, so for new authors, getting the book out there requires hitting the pavement and a few rounds of rejections. At one point, no one stood up for my book but me, and had I stopped writing, I would join the army of upset writers aspiring to a dream.
But in the end, it was worth it, and I think I would have appreciated the process less had I gotten what I wanted right off the bat. I've learned an interesting lesson, that my pride and ego are worthless compared to the satisfaction of a job completed. I guess, from a general perspective, I'd like to encourage everyone to persevere. Whether it's finishing school or running an art business, I hope you will do your best, and know that naysayers are just part of the process. We can't all agree on the same perspective; we can't even all agree on what to have to lunch. But don't drop your goals because someone else said no. You know you better than anyone else in the world, and the worst thing that can happen is that you succeed a little later than planned.
With love,
Mitsuy
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