CHIMERAS

This is a monthly event started by the awesome Alex J. Cavanaugh and organized by the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Click here to find out more about the group and sign up for the next event.

For today's IWSG, I want to share a FB post I published a couple of weeks ago on my page hoping that it is inspirational to all of us. This is my original text:

Today is a good day. Back in 2011 my agent submitted Chimeras to a bunch of BIG 6 acquiring editors. One editor said my science wasn't solid. Another said my main character should've been a woman. Another said, "Why should I care?" 

Well, dear editors, this is why you should care: one year after I published CHIMERAS, over 8,000 people have downloaded the book. It has 98 reviews with a 4.6 ranking. At the same time, the books you acquired back when you rejected mine are ranking quite poorly and only have 20-something reviews. So think about that. 

And to all my readers and supporters I say: THANK YOU. Together, we accomplished something and proved a point.

It's true that most of those 8,000+ copies I've sold through promotions, while big publishers rarely put their books on promotion. But what this tells me is that even though I've been rejected by the BIG 6 editors, I feel like fate or the stars or whatever it is you believe in gave me the best option, the option where I was in control and I could reach out to readers. Instead, it seems like the authors that said editors picked at the time when I was following them have been forgotten. And I feel for them, because once the book is in the hands of a publishers, you have no control over it. You have no control over the price, over the cover, over when and for how long to run a promotion.

There's a good chance that if those editors had picked up Chimeras, then my book would have tanked just like those others books. Instead, I'm still here, still publishing and still making the best out of it. I take one step at the time, yet my readers and fan base have been growing. It took me 3 months to get 40 reviews for Chimeras. In May I published my 5th book (one year and one month after I published Chimeras) and I had 45 reviews within 3 days from launch.

The road to publishing is full of obstacles, setbacks and frustrations. That's why it is so important that we focus on the good things and always stop to listen to the forest growing rather than the one tree falling.