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by rznicolet 96 days ago
As somebody whose first book came out last month from a (very) small indie press... yeah. In trad publishing, once you've got an agent (not an insignificant step), you only have a handful of shots at the Big Five publishers with your manuscript. If they don't want it? It's small press or self-pub, and good luck getting your book above the sea of mediocrity.

The novel I've got out is urban fantasy, but what I _really_ want to get out there is the hard science fiction series entirely from the aliens' points of view... which is very much not a fit with the current zeitgeist. Because that's unlikely to be a blockbuster, if I ever want to see it in print, I'll probably have to do it myself, with a proportionately diminished chance of finding readers.

(And all this is one reason why writers have day jobs. I'll be pleasantly surprised if my novel income hits even 1% of my tech job salary this year.)

2 comments

Please post your books here, rough draft / advance copies welcome, I'd love to read more things from the tiny subset of people who contribute to interesting topics like this on HN
Urban fantasy is my jam, what's your book?