Progress

I finished the 5th round of revisions on First Act of War last week. Needless to say, I was quite pumped. I felt like it was done! And it is indeed a beautiful feeling. Then I began the arduous task of getting the book published. So I started where everyone should start when attempting this - I started with research.

Blindly sending your manuscript to agents and publishers will get you nothing. There are submission guidelines to follow, strategies to employ and a great deal of selling yet to be done.

I previously wrote about my first rejection. Rejection is very normal in the business, but I want to give myself the best possible opportunity. I really don't want a wall full of canned rejection letters. So here's my strategy:

1. I researched what the agents are looking for when they read the first few pages of a manuscript. Needless to say, it was a little different than what I expected. They want you to hook the reader in 1500 words and have your story sold to them by the time you reach 10,000 words. I realized that the opening to my story took far too many words. I need to get into it sooner.

2. I must find an agent that actually deals with the fantasy genre. Asking someone who works in nonfiction to help me publish a fantasy novel is a massive waste of effort.

3. I wrote an excellent short synopsis of my book and a very clear introduction letter. Basically you have to present yourself well in order to give yourself the best the shot of actually having your manuscript read by an agent.

4. I'm starting to market myself. This blog will help. I have a Facebook page about my book started up. I've got some people working on artwork, and I've got some people already working on a personal website.

All this presupposes that I've completed my novel, reviewed and edited it several times, and garnered comments from multiple readers, most of whom are not related to me. I'm convinced that I will give myself a better shot by following these rules.

I guess time will tell. For now it's on  to sixth round revisions. I need to cut about 3k words out of the beginning of my novel to speed it up.