This blog is the best evidence of my writing abilities. Which is: they're not so good.
No respectable publisher will publish my works, any agent with prestige will not let me enter their office. There is no conventional path for me to reach published status, they're not going to carry my books on their shelves. The bad grammar, poor punctuation and spelling, and overuse of cliched patterns and turns of phrases are just the beginning. There is no substance to the content, it's all hot air and fluff. That's great if my goal is to start a cotton candy factory. Not so good if I want to become a published author.
That's the goal, where this ends, hopefully. Or begins, a start of a wonderful journey. To be a respected serious (TM) author who's read by at least a few thousand people. Creator of content that people pay money to read. What an honor it would be in the online era.
Dreams come crashing down at some point you have to know that the palaces you've built are on clouds, they're not real. You have to reconcile your fantasy with ground realities...your dreams with your skills and abilities. Often dreams have to come crashing down, because they're just that, unless you have extraordinary willpower abilities and grit you can't live up to them. Most people find a compromise, they don't abandon their passions and fantasies, they rechannel that energy and tone it down. If not a full-time painter, maybe a doctor who paints on the side, if not a DJ perhaps the president of the biggest Wall Street bank who spins the tunes at clubs in the evenings. And gets on the Billboard top 40, damn what a man that guy.
No one will publish me writings, but I want my works published. Problem. The solution is simple. Self publishing also known as vanity publishing. You pay a company to publish your works, they will register your book, and sell you a couple of hundred prints for cheap so you can sell it to your friends. With modern online publishing you don't need to order in batch, you can set a premium you want per copy of the book, they'll ship the books and do accounting for you, and forward the loyalties straight to your bank account.
What a win.
Problem is, vanity publishing is not prestigious. In some circles, snooty and annoying but also respectable kindof, it's considered cheating, going the easy way, the way of hucksters and talentless hacks. Besides, even for a self-published book, unless you want nobody to ever read you, you have to maintain a minimum standard, have a well-edited and compiled output. At that point, it could be well worth reaching out for real respectability.
Not that I'm judging self-publishing, this is an amazing innovation and something I'm going to be doing soon if my writing doesn't improve. A reprieve, a way out to preserve my sanity and childhood dreams while getting something out.
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