Ooh Boy.

I've sat for a while puzzling, wondering if I was making the right decision. As you can tell by the title of this post, my decision was obviously that of Traditional vs. Self Publishing. 

It's a big decision, and yes, it is a decision. The choice to Self Publish isn't about failing to be picked up by an agent for Traditional Publishing, and this is something I've honestly just really come to the realization of myself.

At the beginning of this year, I promised myself I was going to be published, in some form or fashion by the end of the year. It was a dream, a major goal that I yearned to reach, but always found some excuse not to actually accomplish. It wasn't that I hadn't ever finished writing a project (I had actually finished one just last year... after eight years of working on it), it was that I had never written a project I felt truly confident and proud to put out there for others to read. 

Sure, I let my close friends read that first completed project, and in some ways I do love and plan to revisit it at one point, but for this goal I had in mind, I needed something new, something fresh that I wasn't going to obsess over just because I had been working on it for years at that point. 

And that's where CASCADE comes in! 

When I decided to finally accomplish my goal, I started a new project, one that was largely inspired by the idea of "What if Jumanji met Dungeons and Dragons and Galaxy Quest". Sure, that's not what it truly ended up being, in truth, it became the launching point for what I believe is going to be an immensely fun series The Cadinari Stream. 

But this post isn't about spoiling my new series **COUGH** coming November 1st **COUGH** it's about why I came to the decision to Self Publish.

I sent out one query for Cascade, one I haven't heard anything back from so it really isn't affecting this decision at all. What really made me come to this choice was the simple factor that I realized I'm not really all that special.

That's not being a downer, it's really not. It's being realistic. 

In today's day and age, I'm a cisgender white guy in his early thirties. There's nothing wrong with it of course, it's just that in truth, we are a dime a dozen in the world, especially in the writing world, not 100% sure why that is, I'm not a psychologist (I'm barely a writer), but it's the truth.

So as I went through page after page of agents MSWLs (Manuscript Wishlist for those of you who didn't know what that stands for like I didn't at first) I discovered the truth of the matter. Agents want uniqueness, agents want "bright, diverse, new voices". On top of that, a lot of what they were looking for wasn't what I was writing. And I liked what I was writing, I wanted to write what I was writing.

So what do I do? Well, to me I decided to research the differences between Self and Traditional and was surprised by a lot of the differences, because if the chances of being Traditionally published was low in the category I was writing in, I needed to know what really was the difference.

Of course the Trad Pub route had those benefits of bookstore placement, of marketing help, and probably a ton more I'm not remembering and am too lazy to steal from someone else's blog (seriously if you want a good breakdown of the differences there are other posts about that out there, this isn't that.)

But what drew me to Self Publishing?

It was the timeframe, it was the freedom, it was the... breath of fresh air.

Instead of going through the motions and waiting now for the next few months to send queries and hope I got lucky (which in truth is really what it would take), I decided I wanted to do it myself, to be able to hold the reigns of my own destiny in my hands.

Which means I had to research. I had to learn marketing techniques, I had to learn cover design (because I needed to save money on that to pay for those marketing ideas) and several other fun things. 

I've got a lot to share in the coming weeks as we race toward November 1st, and I can't wait to share it.

So keep any eye here on my blog and keep an eye on my Twitter page, because Cascade is coming soon, and according to the "Marketing Specialists" I need to, let me check my notes here, "create a sense of mystery and intrigue."

.....


There's mystery and intrigue! 

See yah on the Stream folks. Follow @ZEmersonWrites