H.L. Cherryholmes

Finding a literary agent is akin to searching for the Holy Grail. After awhile, you begin to wonder if it’s possible. After an even longer while, you begin to wonder if it actually exists. Eventually, you’re sitting in the corner booth of a dark pub drinking yourself into a stupor as you babble on about the one that got away, the one who kept you dangling for several months, and finally, the one who said they loved you but weren’t in love with you. And the worst part of all, there you are deep in your cups, bleary-eyed and rubber-tongued, when you look up and see that the pub is empty and no one has been listening.

I’d heard about Print-On-Demand and while it sounded better than the old self-publishing route (where you spend thousands of dollars to pay for your books that you schlep around hoping a bookstore will put a few on their shelves), it didn’t sound that much better. My misconception can be traced back to talking with other writers (published, of course) who said that the product produced by P.O.D’s was inferior to actual published books and—as if that weren’t scary enough—going that route would effectively ruin a writer’s chances of ever getting an agent, because it would be seen as a desperate move by an untalented amateur. Yikes! Truthfully, though, I didn’t need anyone to tell me that anything shy of procuring an actual agent was undesirable. I didn’t want to be lumped in with the “vanity” publishing crowd. I was a real writer, dammit! I deserved better!

In 2006, my partner Ron and I were in Austin, Texas for the South by Southwest (All Things Creative) Festival when we stumbled onto a booth hosted by Lulu.com, a Print-On-Demand service. While Ron chatted with the people in the booth and picked up some of their pamphlets, I figuratively flipped up my collar, donned a pair of sunglasses, and pulled my cap down over my forehead just in case there was a real writer hanging about who might point at me and do that hissing, screaming Invasion of the Body Snatchers thing. He’s not one of us! I put on my best disinterested-verging-on-annoyed face and casually picked up one of the books on display. It had the weight of a real book. It looked like real book. I wasn’t going to be fooled, though. Turning my back to the crowd ambling around the booths I took a closer look. I examined the spine for the quality of glue used to hold the book together. I flipped through pages and felt the texture of the paper. I think I even sniffed it to see if it smelled like a real book. If there had been another logo on the spine besides that belonging to Lulu.com, I never would have guessed the book hadn’t come from a large publishing house. Yet, despite seeing first hand that the books published by Lulu.com weren’t inferior to books published elsewhere, I still adamantly refused to even consider Print-On-Demand.

Here’s what changed my mind: One evening when I was bemoaning that, once again, I’d gotten all the way to third base with a literary agent but the blouse had been re-buttoned and the zipper pulled up leaving me with the worst kind of blue balls, Ron said something that got my attention. Ever since our trip to Austin he’d been pushing me to give P.O.D. a try. I resisted by reiterating all that I’d heard from others, but he wasn’t buying it and he reminded me that my manuscripts were sitting on a shelf collecting dust. If what I wanted most was to have people (not agents) read them then why not see how a Print-On-Demand service would work? I’m sure I had a hundred reasons why it wasn’t the way to go and I’m sure I rattled each and every one off to him. But he got me to thinking. Or maybe he got me to drinking and that’s what got me to thinking. In any case, I began to wonder what good was being a writer if no one ever read what I wrote? After more thinking (or drinking) I told him I would give it a shot.

The process was easy enough and cost very little. Using their template, I formatted and uploaded my book. I had a wonderful graphic artist design the cover and uploaded that as well. In just over a week the proof arrived and I was able to see my novel in the form it was always meant to be. After a few adjustments and a few more weeks waiting for approval, A Slight Touch is now available anywhere other books are sold. There are still hurdles to jump such as what would be the best way to publicize it, but it’s no longer a manuscript collecting dust. It’s being read, which is all that I’ve really wanted from the start.

We’ll see what happens.

Popularity: 97% [?]