From Me to You (or Why I Went Indie)
By Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar
This time last year
I was in New York City, that metropolis of culture, entertainment,
and commercial publishing. As part of a literary festival, I pitched
my novel, then a work in progress, to over 30 agents. This was the first
time I had spoken to agents face to face. One said they didn’t know
how to sell a novel with a male protagonist to female readers.
Another said that a foreign setting didn’t appeal to US readers and
asked me to change the places where the story took place. People I
talked to in line said they had come to this event last year or the
year before, and they were back after making changes to their
projects.
I vowed there in
line that I would not be back next year, spinning my wheels. I would
rather try the indie route, the one I heard so much about in other
sessions at the same conference.
“Don’t tell
them that,” one of the organizers said, inclining her head towards
the seated agents.
Twelve of them said
yes, they’d like to see more of the story as it was. Armed with
these signs of encouragement, and it must be said, the human contact,
I returned to our home in Doha, Qatar, to send the manuscript off.
Sure enough, as I
kept working on the manuscript, and sent out samples as requested, the personal touch I had received at the conference (doled out in
three minute segments) evaporated. In their place were the form
rejections that I had received in the ten or so years I had been
writing.
“We regret that
we cannot represent your work and are returning this to you as
someone else might feel otherwise.”
I did what I had
promised myself (and threatened to do at the conference), I
self-published. Not just the one I had gone to New York to sell but
five others. I started with the oldest and worked my way forward as a
way of trial and error in the e-pub world. I learned a lot: a made a
few mistakes.
Here are my top two
rules for success:
One: Get your
network ready long before you need to use it. This means make
friends, gain followers, give reviews, and re-tweet. You get what you
give and you give what you get. So give a lot in the ramp up to your
own work and the community will embrace you.
Two: Explore the
range of services available for indies including editing, cover
design, proof reading, formatting of your ebook, and book trailer
creation. You may find people you like working with immediately; you
may want to do a few of these tasks yourself.
Now, a year later,
I am ready to launch the one book that triggered it all: Love Comes
Later. If you have a story and the time, grit, and determination
to get it into the hands of readers, then epublishing is for you.
Hind is granted a temporary reprieve
from her impending marriage to Abdulla, her cousin. Little does
anyone suspect that the presence of Sangita, her Indian roommate, may
shake a carefully constructed future. Torn between loyalties to Hind
and a growing attraction to Abdulla, Sangita must choose between
friendship and a burgeoning love.
A modern quest for the right to pursue love and happiness, even when it comes in an unconventional package, LOVE COMES LATER explores similarities between the South Asian and Arab cultures while exposing how cultural expectations affect both men and women. Identities are tested and boundaries questioned against the shifting backdrops of Doha, Qatar and London, England.
A modern quest for the right to pursue love and happiness, even when it comes in an unconventional package, LOVE COMES LATER explores similarities between the South Asian and Arab cultures while exposing how cultural expectations affect both men and women. Identities are tested and boundaries questioned against the shifting backdrops of Doha, Qatar and London, England.
LINKS for Mohana:
Website: http://www.mohanalakshmi.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/themohadoha
Twitter: @moha_doha
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3012741.Mohanalakshmi_Rajakumar
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