Hybrid Update

I realised it's pretty much forever since I've told you anything about Hybrid. This is what has happened within the last few months.

The company that said they'd publish it if the beginning was more exciting has unfortunately closed their commissions. So that's a no go for now.

I sent it off to a few more literary agencies. One wasn't interested at all, whereas another said that they really enjoyed it but wasn't sure how well they as a company would be able to sell it. I have, however, two options as to which way to go, and both are promising.

My gran knows an editor who she thinks would be willing to take a look at it. I'd get some professional advice on it and it's also a way to potentially get my foot in the door for any literary agencies she knows. But there's only a small chance of that, and these might be very small literary agencies that won't be able to help me very much. However, it'd be cool to get some advice.

I also have the option of publishing the book on Lulu.com. This means that the book will definitely be sold on Amazon, Barnes and Noble.com and lots of eBook sites, and some other sites that local bookshops order from. In the age where more and more people are starting to buy books online instead of bookshops and swap eBooks for ordinary ones, this is very tempting. I'll have full control on how I want the cover to look, and I'll get paid more in the long run (writers who publish the normal way only get 10% of the profit, i.e. roughly 59 or 69p per book).

Although an editor is tempting and it means less work on grammar, spelling and continuity errors for me, I won't have to wait weeks for her to get round to reading the next chapter if I self-publish, and at least it'll lead to somewhere.

And it kinda comes back to the kind of person I am, too. Although literary agent publishing is proven to work and gets your book in stores, it's very controlled. You as  the writer don't have a say in anything. amyisalittledecoy has designed an amazing cover for it which I would really hope to use, but I wouldn't be able to as the graphic designer would do it for me. There's also the possibility that it would only be sold in the UK, which completely knocks you guys out of the deal. It's kinda reminding me of the major Simon Cowell record label the winners of the X Factor get, where people write their songs and just tell them what songs to sing and they get all the credit for it. I, on the other hand, listen to decent rock music.

Self-publishing, to me, seems like more of an independant label most of my favourite bands are on. I can choose what I want the book to look like - I don't have to write a sequel if I don't want to, and I'm writing for enjoyment value, not marketing value. It's riskier and it won't get sold in big shops unless they decide to invest in it, but it'll be on Amazon, which is amazing - and Barnes and Nobles' website too. Which means that you guys can get a copy of it easily if you wanted to. So it's severely tempting to do that.

I don't know. What do you guys think? The-Shadow-artist and my Mum have both read it, and they both seemed to really enjoy it, so I'm definitely going to do something with it. I'd like to see what you guys think I should do first though