Testing My Patience - Part Four

A writer's journey toward traditional publication

Post Four - Dear [Agent Name], Not Dear Whoever

I have a shortlist now. Names, agencies, the books they've sold, the gaps they're trying to fill. Real people with real inboxes, not a spreadsheet of strangers.

Which means the easy part is over.

Because I guess a query letter addressed to "Dear Agent" is not a query letter at all really. It's just a letter with a big hole cut in it.

I wouldn't take on a job without measuring the room first. Why would I expect someone to take on my book without me first finding out what room they're actually working in.

So that's the job now. Before a single email goes out, I owe each of these people the time it takes to actually know them. What they've represented. What they've said in interviews about what they're hungry for. Whether the last three books they sold sit anywhere near Clonfert or nowhere close to it at all. Whether they've got room on their list right now or whether I'd be one more query in a pile they can't get to until spring.

I'm not trying to flatter. This is simply telling someone the truth about why their name is on my list - because something in their history suggests they might actually want to read this book, not just receive it.

It's respect, plainly. They're being asked to give unpaid time to a stranger's manuscript. The least I can do is not waste it.

The Wobble

I said I'd write about all of this honestly, including the parts that don't flatter me. So here's one.

The last few days have tested my patience in a way the earlier posts haven't quite captured yet.

Doing the agent research properly means sitting with the actual timescale. Weeks to build the list properly. Weeks more before September. Then, if I'm fortunate, more weeks of silence after that - because silence is apparently the default reply in this industry, not the exception. And somewhere in the middle of totting all that up, a very simple, very unhelpful thought turned up uninvited.

I could just publish it myself. Tonight, if I wanted to.

I've done it twice already. I know exactly how. No query letters, no waiting, no strangers deciding whether my book is worth their time. Just upload it and it exists in the world tomorrow.

And God, some days I want that. I want Clonfert read. Not eventually - now. I've carried these seven women around in my head for months and there's a kind of impatience that comes with knowing a book is finished and knowing nobody can read it yet.

But here's what's stopping me.

I have no idea how to get people to actually find a book once it's published. None. I proved that with the first two. Self-publishing solves the problem of getting a book out into the world.

It does nothing whatsoever about getting the world to notice it's there.

And the people offering to solve that for me are, without exception so far. Facebook, X and Gmail accounts telling me my writing is extraordinary, my cover is stunning, my book deserves to be a bestseller, and all it needs is a modest investment in "marketing services" to make that happen. It's a boiler room. Different script, same operation as the one I wrote about back in Part Two. They don't care what the book is. They care that I've published something and might be frightened enough, or hopeful enough, to pay.

So, I'm caught between two doors that both cost something. Self-publish and I get speed, at the price of a silence I don't know how to break. Query and I get a real chance at readers, editors, distribution, a shot at this actually working, at the price of months I don't currently have much patience for.

Here's what I keep coming back to, though.

I know my writing is developing. I also know it's good. Clonfert is genuinely the best thing I've written, and I don't say that lightly about my own work. Does it need a sharp editor's eye before it goes anywhere near a shelf? Of course it does, every book does, mine included.

Can I afford one of the top ones right now? No.

Which is, if I'm honest with myself, the actual answer underneath the wobble. I don't just want the book out. I want it out properly, edited by someone who'll make it better, published in a way that gives it an actual chance of finding readers, not just existing quietly on a platform where nobody's looking. Traditional publishing is the only route I currently have to any of that, expensive editors included.

So no self-publishing. Not yet.

The list keeps getting built. Each name on it is getting the time it deserves.

I'm still testing my patience. I suspect I will be for a while yet.

Steve