On my homepage, I mentioned that I wrote a novel ten years ago. Lately, I have felt the urging to dig it out again and try to relearn the publishing business which has changed so dramatically in ten years… not to mention since the 70’s.
Publishing is not new to me. In the 1970’s, my husband and I wrote and illustrated books and magazine articles as a way to make money when we lived on our sailboat, but publishing was so different then — portable typewriters, carbon paper, and snail mail.
Nowadays, the market is so glutted with self-published books that standard publishers need a guaranteed return on their investment.
Nowadays, unless you’re Stephen King or Annie Dillard, a publishing house will not give you the time of day without an agent.
Nowadays, an agent will not give you the time of day without an “on-line presence,” and a “following.”
So, the website.
In February I attended my first Florida Christian Writers Conference at Lake Yale Conference center. Fabulous! Hundreds of professional and aspiring writers who love Jesus in one room! I was very encouraged by the response to my novel from a NY Times bestselling author. Also, a poem I wrote won inclusion in a soon-to-be-released book. So, that was encouraging.
However, from all sides I learned that my manuscript of St. Anne’s is about twice as long as it should be for consideration by a standard publisher. I also learned that belly-aching about how much harder it is to publish in today’s marketplace is sort of stupid really. It is what it is. So, no more belly-aching. Promise!
Nowadays, I spend a couple of hours a day mercilessly editing St. Anne’s, and I spend more than a couple of hours a day trying to learn about how to use domain names, servers, hosting services, et al. Then I study even more to learn how to use this software to prepare these web pages without accidentally pushing the wrong button and erasing everything I wrote for the past hour. AAGH ! It has happened a few times. Oops, that was belly-aching, wasn’t it. Sorry.
Please pray for me that I continue along the path God has set before me, that Satan, that old discourager, is kept at bay, and that I finally succeed in entering the 21st Century, technologically speaking.
So, the website.
Thank you for reading!
Jane
janeduquette.org 