My sci-fi novel Nytho comes out in less than a month (January 7!), so maybe it’s time to talk about why I decided to go the self-publishing route for this title. Hint: It’s not just because I couldn’t get a literary agent.
Background on Nytho
I’ve alluded to Nytho’s history in a few other blog posts, but the short and sweet of it is that the idea came from a prompt in a creative writing class I took back in 2022. “Tell a story from the perspective of an unreliable narrator” or something along those lines. I liked the idea of someone a bit mentally unhinged. A fanatic lost in their fever of zealotry. There was a single put out by Grimes and HANA called “We Appreciate Power” that came to mind and was essentially about AI fan girls. (It’s since come to my attention that Grimes is super problematic so I’m a bit annoyed that I have to associate Nytho with her at all. So it goes.) In any case, that was the seed of the idea for Nytho. An imprisoned woman who fell in love with a rogue AI recounts how she got to this point. This became chapter one of Nytho.
The rest of the novel unfolded for me as I wrote that first chapter/short story. Within a week or two, I had the jist of the novel mapped out. Three months later, and Nytho was complete at 120,000 words. I let it sit for a while, edited it, then sent it out to beta readers. After assimilating their feedback, I revised Nytho until it felt ready for querying to literary agents.
The Dark Days
Obviously, I didn’t hit the literary jackpot. I got hit with rejection after rejection instead, but I tried not to let it get to me and powered on to work on my next novel. I continued to query Nytho for the months that followed and made myself become numb to rejections.
After 100, I wondered if there was some glaring issue with the novel that my seven beta readers had failed to point out. I opted to hire a developmental editor to really tear into Nytho, no simple decision considering how much a developmental edit on a 120,000-word novel costs. Still, I have a day job, so I viewed the expense as a learning experience. I knew I would grow as a writer from the editor’s feedback. And I did! She was great and far exceeded my expectations. She suspected one of the main issues was the length. I managed to tighten up the writing, made the beginning more streamlined, pulled the ending out a bit more, and massaged the wording to get it all down to under 100,000 words.
I resumed my querying about a year after I had first started it. Anddddd, still no dice. I reached the end of my list of agents to query for a grand total of 101 rejections and 110 no responses. It was humbling, but at least I knew from my editor’s feedback that my writing wasn’t the problem. I chalked it up to the debate raging about AI, especially in the creative fields. Maybe no one wanted to read a book that framed AI in an even mildly positive light. Note that one of the major themes of Nytho is the subjectiveness of truth, which is why I wrote it in first-person with five narrators. It does not frame AI in a black-and-white way. Shades of gray are my thing. Moral ambiguity is what it’s all about.
Pressing Onward
In any case, that was the end of my querying for Nytho. At that point, I had a new novel ready for querying. I put Nytho aside and focused on the new one, Rewilders. I was hopeful for this one. It was written in the more popular POV of third-person and deals with the negative side of AI on creative fields as well as presenting math as magic. I was able to shift my focus because it wasn’t really the end for Nytho. The 14 novels I have planned are interconnected, but they aren’t all direct sequels. Rewilders could come out before Nytho, and it would all work. At some point, the publication order would matter, but I had at least six more stand-alone novels that could be my debut.
Then, I got my first ever request for the full manuscript of Rewilders. I was ecstatic. Just getting this kind of request is super rare. I thought, once the agent sees the whole novel, she can’t do anything but fall in love with it. Except she didn’t. She turned it down and crushed my soul in the process. I thought by this point I’d built up a skin against rejections, but to get one step closer just to get knocked back again was brutal. After sulking for a few days, I pressed on.
The Realization
It was around this time that I finished reading the second of two awful recently published sci-fi novels, Camp Zero and Womb City. I’m sorry to the authors for the brutal honesty. These were both traditionally published (i.e., not self-published) debut novels, but both had major issues. I couldn’t believe they got published and were represented by some of the same literary agents I’d queried for multiple projects, while Nytho languished. It was the last straw. I’d lost all faith in the traditional publishing industry. The gate-keeping wasn’t resulting in quality products, so what was the point trying to be a part of that system?
Around this time, I also happened to read a blog post by Jane Friedman that explained the nuances of the different publishing systems. I was shocked to learn that traditional publishers don’t do nearly as much as authors think they will when it comes to the marketing. The publishers choose the title and cover. They might even force me to change key aspects of the story. To top it all off, they take a substantial cut of the profits without helping with the most-dreaded task of marketing.
I looked into what is involved with self-publishing, and after doing a little research, I knew it was the route to take Nytho. It’s a lot of work either doing all the publishing and marketing yourself or finding and hiring others to farm work out to. Still, I knew I was self-motivated enough to do it, and I always enjoy learning new things. The journey is almost over, and I have to say, it’s been a lot of fun self-publishing Nytho.
Looking Forward
I’m still trying traditional publishing for some of my projects. If nothing else, it would be interesting to see how the two systems compare. That being said, if I end up self-publishing all my novels, I won’t mind overmuch. After all, I write because I love the process, not for fame or money. If my books are forgotten, so it goes…but hopefully not!
Leave a Reply