Looks like I’ll be getting ‘published’ sooner than I thought

I did a ton of research this weekend as I prepared for my next round of query letters, and I got to say, I found some pretty scary stuff.

(See especially, this: http://www.scribd.com/doc/25809014/Published-or-Printed)

I mean, I was prepared to fight to get through the sludge to get published, but I am NOT  prepared to have my work barely marketed and only “printed,” not “published.” (Read the above article if you’re a writer and care.)

If you’re a friend or just a follower of mine — I like to pretend I already have legions of fans — then all that you need to know is I’ve decided to publish my Western novel as an eBook, and it should be up for sale in two weeks. (I’ve got my awesome wife, an awesome artist as well, working on the book cover.)

There are a ton of reasons for this, but mainly, here’s some of my reasoning:

• If I landed an agent tomorrow, it could still take two years before the book is published. And if the editor behind the book leaves or management changes at the publishing house, then it’s back to square one.
• Publishing an eBook CAN get me a contract sooner, and a better advance than trying to go the regular submission route with an agent.
• Finally, there are very few agents accepting Westerns, and frankly, that’s for good reasons. The market is small and most Western writers fall short in the talent category, when compared to other fiction genres.

So, for all these reasons, I’ll be publishing my Western — The tale of ‘Little Man’ Paul Zachary and the Dixon County War — in roughly two weeks as an eBook. And I’ll, of course, be saying more about the book in the coming days and once it’s published; all in an effort to con as many of you as possible into buying.