J.G. Follansbee

Authors new and established face a question unthinkable a few years ago: Should I publish my book myself? Some writers finish a novel and go right to self-publishing. Others go the traditional route to see if an agent or publisher will take a chance on their work. For the latter group, here’s 10 omens that auger self-publishing your novel.

• The volume of rejection emails from publishers and agents forces your email provider to suspend your account.
• The pile of hard-copy unpublished manuscripts on your desk falls over and crushes your cat.
• On your 54th birthday, your mother asks you if you’re ever going to make something of that masters in English you got in 1983.
• You’re the only person in your writing group who hasn’t had his/her third novel published. Or second. Or first.
• You measure success by the ratio of actual rejections by agents and publishers to no-response whatsoever.
• Your royalty checks fail to cover your checking account’s overdraft fees.
• You realize that three of your unpublished novels have the same ideas as A Time to Kill, Wool, and Fifty Shades of Grey.
• The rejected manuscript the UPS guy delivered was typed on the IBM Selectric you owned before you bought the 1999 iMac you use now.
• Your collection of rejection letters would paper the outside walls of the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum combined.
• A museum curator asks to use your early rejection letter for an exhibit on obsolete publishing models.

What signs and portents foretell self-publishing for you?