Feature: Getting Published is Guerilla Warfare

by Alex Miller

I remember how differently I thought in 2007 than I do now. I had just finished work on my first book, a memoir, The Heart of a City. Oh, how happy I was to have achieved such a stellar accomplishment at such a young age. How I danced and pranced about my apartment. I had no idea what a “vanity press” was. Heck, I didn’t even know what a printing press was. Joking on that last part, but you get my drift.

And so, off I went into the world, believing that I’d soon be a millionaire author with a couple supermodels on either side of me to feed me grapes in my lounge chair on the beach. But alas! I had published my book through a vanity publisher that wanted to charge me an additional $3,000 for editing services (on top of the $1,000 I’d already paid for them to provide me with ten copies of said book). Figuring it would be okay to release a book rampant with errors, I opted out of paying that 3K that I didn’t have just lying around the house. The end result? You’ve never heard of me.

I said that getting published is guerilla warfare, didn’t I? I should have said getting published by a reputable publisher is guerilla warfare. The truth is, just about anyone can get published, including Lulu the Dog Girl. Vanity presses, some of which are owned by big-shot houses like Ingram Book Group and Time-Warner Publishing, bring in billions in revenue each year. The problem is, these vanity presses have millions upon millions of clients. In order to get published by Ingram itself, you’d better don your camouflage face paint, grab those old combat boots, slap on a trendy headband, and drag a literary agent into the jungle. If that agent doesn’t take you on as a client by the time you’re done, it’s time to call John Rambo.

But seriously. Humorist Don Marquis put it best when he said, “Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.”

I suppose somewhere, at some point in human existence, a person’s talent was all it took for them to become well-known. Nowadays, it would seem the contrary is true. How often do we turn on the television and learn that someone has become famous merely because their last name is Hilton? How often is recognition given to those out there with better smiles than God, with better hair than Zeus, and with better skin than all the supermodels suffering from Botox and collagen overdoses combined?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not all about the accolades and the money. If that were the case, I would have bought a few shares of Halliburton stock a long time ago. Truly, the real joy comes from writing. But writers are professionals, and just like all the other professionals out there, we’re looking for success. I’m not Alex Rodriguez, making it known that I won’t step on a plate if I get paid one penny less than $30 million. If someone has to pay you that much to do what you love, there’s definitely a problem.

My gripe lies with the Industry. This thing is tough. To quantify the number of hours I’ve spent drinking because of a rejection letter would be meaningless. Astronomical distances aren’t nearly as large as the amount of failure I’ve felt heaped upon my shoulders after being “positively” turned down by a publisher. The amount of energy produced by a quasar dulls in comparison to how hard I have struggled with my personal demons.

Sometimes I wonder what our world would be like without writers. It’s hard to imagine, really. What kind of boring, soulless, homogeneous existence would that be? Think about it: No TV shows, no movies, no music and no singers/songwriters/musicians, no books and therefore no libraries to house those books, no laws and no Congress to enforce those laws, no journals or diaries, no future for young Agatha Christie, or Samuel Longhorn Clemens, or William Shakespeare. What a world.

People ask me why I keep trying. Why do I remain steadfast in my pursuit of literary success even though it would be easier to lie down and die? Why? Because this is war…a war against the ones who don’t want me to make it. The ones waiting for me to fail. Those are the same ones in the Industry that I’m standing up against. So I’m bringing my guerilla warfare to the table—it’s all I have left.