Q&A with Jacob's Courage author, Charles Weinblatt discussion

The good news is, my query letter has improved and an agent has asked for a partial. The not so good news is that while I've been tweaking my novel and polishing my query, my revenue stream has dried up. Should I consider self publishing a book first had published in the 70s?

At the time, the book was a best seller and was resold to five different houses. With an update, it could have another successful run. But do I want to do whatever it takes to self publish--so I can have some money coming in while I focus on my fiction? Is that realistic? Or will it eat up so much time that I can't work on my next novel?

Since the book has already gone the gambit of traditional publishing, self-publishing should be a breeze. Just be careful which way you choose. And since ebooks seem to be all the rage, you should consider that as well as hard copies.

Okay, I should be careful. What does that mean? Do you have suggestions for some that are better than others? What about publishing through Amazon? And how much time does all this--and the blogging and the promoting--take?

The very first step you should take is to check with Preditors & Editors http://pred-ed.com/ In fact they are a really good source for just about every aspect to do with writing. CreateSpace is the company that publishes through Amazon and I've heard good things about them though I haven't tried them myself. As far as the blogging and promoting - for that, you're in it for the long haul. You want to be seen and make tons of online friends and then interest them in your writing. I have a blog (http://AnnaLWalls.blogspot.com) where I post snippets of my writing from whichever of my books strikes my interest. I also post up the winning entry of our writing contest on Ambitious Writers here on Goodreads. They're a fun group of girls who love to write. Just recently, I started another blog (http://TheFortunesOfMagic.blogspot.com) where I have started posting a chapter a week of one of my books. My website (http://AnnaLWalls.weebly.com) has the synopses for about half of my books. And once a day I advertise my book and my sites both on Twitter and on Facebook. *sigh* The advertising doesn't take long but the socializing can take hours, and it's almost a must. I'm not very good at it though, but I can attribute at least a handful of book sales to the effort. Like I said, long haul.

Anna, thanks for the tips.