As I have stated previously (and before my six month vacation) on an earlier post, I have decided against going the traditional route of the large publishing firm to get my novel published. After about two years of trying through literary agents who have no use for unpublished authors to publishing houses who only want to print books from some celebrity's latest drug rehab failure, I have given up my dream of getting published that route. As I look upon it now, it was all a pipe dream. I see that now. I did give a hard look at self-publishing. But, I quickly discovered for the vast majority of self-published authors, the only people making money are the self-publishing companies. The fees are just astonishing! I also discovered (not the hard way, thank God) that many are simply scams. I have seen where some self-publishers charge up to $20K to get a book printed, proofread, formatted and distributed. I don't care who you are, that is too damn much money.

Instead, I have decided to go the ebook way of publishing. I should have done that a long time ago. I had been thinking of this since my talk with a writer around Thanksgiving of last year. I have almost decided on the company that will do this for me. I had no idea there were so many different formats for ebooks. This company will do all the conversions and will correct any errors it finds. All for about $150.00. I don't think that can be beat. They even assign the ISBN for you. The announcement, last month by Amazon, that ebooks outsold paperback for the first time in their history, sold me on going this way to get my novel published. This is on top of the announcement July 2010 that ebooks had outsold hardback books for the first time. The writing, literally and figuratively, was on the wall.

So, my novel (Diary: Alone on Earth) will at long last be published in April. That will be two years to the month I finished the novel. It has been a long journey fraught with adventure...and disappointment. How will it sale? I have no idea. But, at least, it "will be out there." I hope you will consider giving it a look.