The Final Rejection?

Yesterday THE SWEET SIXTEENTH took its final hit of rejection from another agent. It was the final query that was out there with any hope left. It would seem that this final nail is going to lock down the lid on the coffin of TSS, but it's not.

In this modern age of media sharing, the word "dead" when it comes to works of fiction never really applies anymore. In the old days of writing, a trunk novel was just that... a book that would be put in a trunk to never see the light of day again. Trust me, I have four of them. But those four books were really nothing but practice, along with the countless short stories I have in the two dozen or so notebooks stuffed into the closet of my music room. None of those stories are worth time or effort. That is not the case with TSS. I believe this novel should be read by those who are so inclined. Those few that have already read it liked it enough to make me not trunk it.

Exactly what I'm going to do with it, I'm still in the process of deciding, but I'm leaning towards publishing it as an eBook for the Kindle with Amazon. I have been communicating with other authors who've done this, and for the most part the process is painless. Some of the writers I've spoken to have had really good luck with sales, others have said it ends up like a vanity press effort where only their friends and families bothered to buy.

My only concern, is that if I put it for sale on Amazon, in a way it does kill the book. That is the irony in all this. Most publishers seem to indicate that they will never be interested in a self-published eBook for future publication. So you take a risk in doing an eBook if you feel a publisher might take a chance in the future. But that's the thing with novels. Just because an agent rejects it, does not mean that he or she would reject it every time. Most of the rejections I got for TSS were positive, and indicated that they were just not in the market for that story, at that time. But I've heard many stories of writers selling books two years later that were rejected by everyone the first time around. So it's not impossible to imagine that some agent down the road might be interested... then again maybe not... but either way I don't have to decide now.