"Yes, I wrote a book." (Part 3)

One early morning in about the first week of May, as I was riding the elevator back to my cube, my cell phone rang. Now normally, I don't answer my phone in the elevator, due to the fact that I can become quite nasty/provocative while talking. Because of that, I usually wait until I'm safely in my cubicle before answering.

So, when I flipped the phone, I saw the number was from Indiana. 'Strange,' I thought to myself, since the only person I knew from Indiana, wouldn't call me that early in the morning. Answering it anyways, the person on the other end was not my friend from Indiana, but in fact a publishing consultant from a company called "AuthorHouse", who specializes in self-publishing.

The gentleman was doing up a follow up call (or cold call, take your pick) and wanted to know what kind of progress I was making. I should back track a little and state that I had contacted this company approximately several months ago (on the recommendation of a local author), when I was exploring the option of self-publishing my manuscript. At the time I had politely told him, via the e-mail and phone, that I wanted to try and land an agent for my book, and if I didn't have any luck after my self-imposed deadline of the end of the summer, I would seriously consider self-publishing my novel.

This time however, after six months of either form letter rejections (yah, that's a good way to tell someone not to darken your doorstep) or rejections using your query letter (oooh, even better way to tell someone to go away), I decided to listen to what the man had to say.

What he said was very concise, persuasive and informative. After discussing the pros and cons of my situation in particular, I told him to send me the required information via the e-mail, so that I could do some research and think long and hard about it.

A couple of weeks later, after doing some research and thinking very long and very hard about it, I decided to take the plunge and self-publish my novel. I contacted the company again, ask one last question that I had (control over my own website), and settled up on the purchase contract.

So, after spending about five and half months writing, revising and re-revising my manuscript; another five months submitting it to contests and agents; six more months having it professionally revised; eight months having it submitted on my behalf to publishers; and seven months of rejections (over two years worth of time), I'm finally going to have my novel published....