I admit it — I took a bit of a break. The family really did go to Tuacahn in St. George, Utah, followed by a few days in Disneyland last month. However, the big reason for the hiatus is that I have been spending most of my “free” time working on self-publishing my first book: Called To Serve Again.
It took me a while to decide whether to self-publish it or not, but I really did not have a lot of other options at this point. The book is LDS general fiction, so there are not a lot of publishers willing to look at it to begin with, and the potential audience is a small niche of the population. I mistakenly submitted it to Deseret Book and Covenant before it was properly edited (I did 2 edits and thought it was done), and of course, they both turned it down. I then went to the LDSStorymakers Conference in May 2010 and learned why they turned it down. I then re-wrote the first 1/3 of the book, and sent it through several readers for feedback. This was followed by 3 more major edits.
Then in May of this year, I asked Covenant if they would be willing to take a look again, and they wouldn’t touch it because it had already been turned down once. I then submitted it to Cedar Fort, and they declined to publish, but it was obvious from their letter that it had made it through the slush pile and had been reviewed. Their response took less than 1 month, which I also took as a positive sign, and I made the corrections to the manuscript that they cited in their letter. However, LDS fiction is a tough sale to begin with, and many of the smaller LDS publishers are fairly selective and/or struggling right now (I believe 2 smaller LDS publishers went out of business this year). With the growing popularity of e-books, and the available resources on the web, I decided it would be better to self-publish the book if for no other reason than to actually say it is finished.
Do I expect a million downloads? No, I have fairly realistic expectations, but mostly I will have the satisfaction of accomplishing one of my goals. It has also energized me to work on the sequel, as well as 2 other books that would be non-religious, but still fiction. Stay tuned to see how things turn out.
© Copyright 2011 Jeff, All rights Reserved. Written For: Jeffrey Olsen