Writing.Com General Discussion

Hello everyone!

After I came out from my closet, and self-publish a book, I've got some hard first hand experience, which I wanted to share/ask you about.

The book market, specially the self-published one is flooded, up to the point where everyone is shouting their book at every social media available, every other second (it reminds me of that classic 'stock market' feeling). This quickly made me realize that how impossible it is to let your voice heard. Then there's the fact, that I don't write stories that fall into the YA section, or any other 'light' literature, rather then focus on more mature themes such as poverty, class differences, and so on, and maybe have a touch of that extra somethin' that would fall under 18+ (violence, relationships in detail). Plus, I'm not from an English speaking country. I even got this gut feeling, that the market doesn't want these kinds of stories, generally. As far as I could tell, at this point I'd be better off selling pulps.

And about getting noticed: because of the immense segmentation of the market, many of the readers are quite skeptical on approaching a new writer, even if the thing that the person produced is free of charge, let alone give the time to give a proper review. Hence it becomes an endless circle of trying to get out, or at least stay afloat. Publishers and agents, and official reviewers could be a saving point, if they wouldn't be flooded with requests, all the time. I was lucky enough to get an answer from an agent's, but was refused due to the fact that they were looking for an unpublished author.

This whole situation reminds me of J.K. Rowling: the fact that she sent her script to multiple publishers and everybody turned her away, except one, who's daughter liked it really much, thus got a chance by sheer luck, which happened over twenty years ago.

Let me know what do you think about this!

Take care,
Marcel