Maybe Self-Publishing Is The Way To Go??

Dear Lit Loves,

You know, I just read an article about books whose authors gave up on trying to find a literary agent and just took the bull by the horns and self-published their book.  Heck, Lisa Genova, author of Still Alice, said she finally gave up pursuing the traditional route to publishing after she spent a year querying literary agents and only received rejection after rejection.  Wait a cotton-pickin' minute!  Wasn't that the movie for which Julianne Moore won a Best Actress Oscar?!!!  Also, I've just learned that Legally Blonde, which most of us know as the Reese Witherspoon movie, was originally a self-published book by Amanda Brown.  Hmmmm.  Interesting.  E.L. James originally self-published Fifty Shades of Grey before it went on to be traditionally published and also made into a movie.  Mother Mary Help All Us Striving And Starving Unknown Writers!  There might be hope for all of us yet!!  Maybe literary agents really do not know what the public has a hankering for these days??  Also, The Martian by Andy Weir was originally self-published and now it has been made into a movie that just grossed 300 million.  And then more recently, my brother informed me that the book we found quite deep and revealing titled The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield was originally self-published.  In other words, just because a literary agent doesn't recognize what will fly off the shelves doesn't mean you the author don't know your genre well enough to recognize that what you are writing just might be the next big thing. Maybe what you are writing is needed in your genre of choice.  Damn, it really makes you think about the possibilities doesn't it?!!  And last point,  I just want to say that I know many of these writers did not have access to Twitter and Instagram because it wasn't even around when they self-published.  So my question for today is this:  why are the literary agents or literatti as I refer to them, missing so many big publishing hits???  Damn, we unknown writers might have more opportunities than we think we do.  Very telling, isn't it??  Just my nugget of wisdom for today.



Grace
(Amy)