Modern commercial writing advice says to build your brand and audience before submitting your work to agents and publishers.
The logic is sound. If you have loyal followers, you have a sales base. You’re more marketable. Even if you don’t pursue traditional publishing, that fan base will be your direct sales base through your self-publishing efforts. It’s solid marketing advice.
But how does a writer reconcile their unpublished status with this premise?
I have no publishing credentials. I have a handful of “finished” short stories. I have a few novels in the drawer, but none polished past a first draft. And, while I am always working on a project and my end goal is to be a published novelist, I find it difficult to convince myself that building a following for that unfinished writing is fair to the potential fan base.
Maybe this is a self-esteem thing. Maybe it’s fear that I will never amount to the writer and novelist that I promise myself that I will become, and therefore it is easier to not make these promises to the public at large.
But maybe, just maybe, I owe it to myself and my career to make this commitment. It’s time to declare myself to the world. I, Alex Vail Faber, am a writer. I am an artist. And I will be a published novelist.
So here’s to beginnings and journeys.