The Vase - Rewritten and Ready

Once again, my novel The Vase is undergoing submissions. To agents and publishers. But this time I'm going slow. Now that I read through the entire manuscript, making improvements where I believed they were necessary, the manuscript is better than ever. So much so that I'm giving the agent route another shot. But I'm not going full steam ahead with that. I'm only going to query maybe five or six agents at the max. If there are still no takers I'm not going to worry about it.

Publishers were quick to offer contracts the last time I submitted. And that was before the manuscript was as polished as it is now. I'm hoping to land another print run publisher. I do want the book in bookstores. Yes, my goal is the Big Five. But I'm not so set on that. Getting published by the Big Five seems ever elusive to me. And there are probably several reasons for that. The first of which is the fact that you need an agent for that. But if I don't get there, there are other reputable publishers out there that don't require agents, and some can be a great home for The Vase.

It's funny in a way. Because at one point, The Vase was the first of my five novels to get a contract offer. But before it could get published, the publisher folded. Then another publisher offered a contract. Then that publisher underwent some major internal problems, and I pulled the book from their lineup. Then Killer of Killers was published first. Then The Vase got four more contracts offered. I finally settled on Penumbra, but now Penumbra is undergoing problems of their own, and I pulled The Vase once again making it available to another publisher. Which means now, The Vase will be the last of my five novels to get a contract offer. Weird. It was the first and it will be the last.

But after all is said and done with publishers, I don't want to go the POD route. It's not the best way to get your book published. Yes, it's better than being self-published. And yes it's better than not being published at all. But it won't be in book stores. And that's what I'm looking to as a criteria this time. Does the publisher get their books into bookstores? We'll see how that goes. Stay tuned.