So, you wanna be a writer? Publishing in transformation

The is the second of a two-part series. For part one, go online to tcextra.com.

Exit Harper Collins, and now I have a wonderful British agent who specializes in books on spirituality and is branching out into spiritual fiction. We set up our strategies and decided to take a year or so working the London and Frankfurt Book Fairs — my book, entitled “Divinia,†elicited enthusiastic responses at both —and finding other publishing houses.

Eventually Little, Brown got in the game, another big company, and very interested in vampires these days. Other companies of slightly less stature also got on board, and almost a year ago my agent quipped one day that we were close to a “Divinia†auction.

But we weren’t satisfied at the end of this run. Once more, Little, Brown wanted all-out control; too much would have been changed, and the subject matter of the book is both important and sensitive enough that we felt we couldn’t let that occur.

So, come spring/summer 2010, I then took it upon myself to find as many independent publishers as I could on my own, keeping my agent in the loop, but also taking control of a very complicated situation. Hundreds of more hours were spent doing a daunting amount of research, calling, e-mailing, querying, etc. And in the end it has really paid off. On my own I got seven or eight more companies very interested. Each has its positives and negatives, and the complexities of the decision-making process have been dizzying, to put it mildly.

Now, I have a slight case of an embarrassment of riches. Two up-and-coming Canadian pub houses have taken the lead, but there are others. There will either be a small advance against sales or no advance.

But basically on my own, with a lot of help from great people like Paul Cohen, the publisher of Monkfish in Rhinebeck, N.Y., I’ve pushed the envelope and found both integrity and possible good sales and presence.

One company even offered an option agreement, very rare, which would have tied up my intellectual property for at least another three months before they offered the contract. Why? They wanted to avoid a bidding war. In the end, as a result of a couple of conference calls and then another conversation with their acquisition manager, I was able to convince them to do away with the option agreement. They very much want the book.

None of the above normally pertains to previously published authors. But increasingly even they will often publish with a partnership-in-publishing or self-publishing imprint, like my friend Elizabeth Cunningham at Epigraph/Monkfish. And these days, nonfiction sells better than fiction, a tragedy if you ask me.

So, if you are an aspiring writer who would very much like to publish a first novel, be prepared for craziness, for long months wondering whether your work will ever see the light of day, for moments of crippling doubt. And remember: Few writers actually make a living from writing.

But my story should empower you to realize that you can be published … if you yourself work tirelessly and are willing to change in midstream and take risks and dream the dream.

Peter Schaufele is a writer, producer and singer/songwriter living in Salisbury.