Books by Len du Randt

Monday 5 March 2012

Publishing Woes of SoP

It took me two years to write The Son of Perdition. Editing it afterwards took another chunk of my life. In-between feedback and applying the changes/fixes, I decided that time would be best spent writing another novel. I then jumped into The Incubus (to hit Amazon.com soon) and finished it about a year or so later. At more or less the same time, I had implemented all the suggestions (those that I agreed with, at least) of my proof readers and started sending SoP to all the local publishers we had here. At three months per response, it took me 9 months just to get feedback from the three major ones here. All of them shot me down.

Not deterred, I somehow managed to land an agent that was very excited about the book. She sent it to the UK, Australia, and the USA. Every publisher sent it back with a, ‘not for us’ letter attached to it. During this time, I managed to finish The Succubus as well.

After being rejected more times than I bothered to count, my agent decided to rather call it quits. It seems that no publisher wanted to touch a book the size of Son of Perdition written by a nobody. Printing costs alone would be through the roof and there was no way that they could determine whether the book would sell or not.

I then tried an experiment and uploaded the first few chapters to a blogging site and then offered the rest of the eBook at a cost. I managed to sell a whopping three or four copies, but the feedback from all of them was fantastic. I knew in my gut that people would like the book if I could only find a platform through which I could reach more than just a handful of people.

A local entrepreneur started his own publishing firm and I offered him The Son of Perdition, The Incubus, and The Succubus as a means to help him, help me. He asked me to remove the chapters from the site, which I promptly did. A few days later I found out that I won the blog page’s 2007 Best Fiction Writer’s award for The Son of Perdition, much to the dismay of the other contenders. They argued that since I removed the book, I was no longer eligible to win. The admin guy came back and said that the decision had been made before I removed the chapters and so the award stood.

 


The publisher guy never got off the ground, so I pulled my books and shelved them while I blogged around a bit, during which time I got halfway through two novels. I’ll tackle and finish them both later this year.

A friend of mine recently called me and said that he heard an interview with an author over the radio and that this author made him think of me. He then told me about the Kindle thing on Amazon and I decided to check it out. After some research and a final polish-through of The Son of Perdition, I felt that the book had found its long-awaited platform and was finally ready for upload.

Those 10+ years had been part of a LONG and very, VERY lonely road, but one I would be happy to trudge through again and again.

If you haven’t done so already, grab your copy of The Son of Perdition over at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0079II88M - Amazon Prime members can borrow the book for free. Your support would be appreciated more than words would EVER be able to describe.



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