Hello friends. It's time to ask a published author anything

Hello friends. It's time to ask a published author anything.

I'd like to consider myself a baby David Foster Wallace that had sex with Tao Lin.

Who published you, or did you self publish? How many books have sold? How much money have you made? (minus any money you put into getting published).

Can you link us to any reviews of your work?

Apparently I've made over 1 million but I've only seen roughly $600,000. I'm published by a popular company that deals with extremely graphic and uncensored novels. Sold over 100,000 books.

I shall link reviews and my work depending on how good or bad this thread goes.

do you have a job?

I was a published poetry author in the third grade. Calling yourself a published author means less than nothing.

I used to work at a surf shop before I got published. Now my job is to push my currently completed work as far as I can. That's my full time job now. Meeting with people and getting my work into their circles. Imagine thousands of miniature oprah book clubs across the nation. My job is to meet with the heads of those people, have a nice chat and hopefully the people will like me enough to buy my book. NPR has done wonders for me.

I would love to read your poetry. I imagine it would be interesting to read the work of such a prodigious poet.

>I would love to read your poetry

Are you willfully misinterpreting what I said or are you honestly this daft? If you were published you would know it's common for them to take kids' poetry, compile them into a book and try to sell it back to their parents. What have you written? Link it.

Yes, I am certain that your parents were very proud to have raised such a talented poet.

Lol, exactly as I thought, you haven't written shit.

Sage.

I believe in you, OP. Congratulations.

If I may ask, how old are you? Veeky Forums likes to push the meme that you have to be published by 25 to be considered a genius. I don't think it's true, mostly because at least one of Veeky Forums's favorite writers--Gene Wolfe--wasn't published until his 30s. All the same, it might be fun to know how old you are.

I'll say that I am 29 myself and have just gotten several short stories published in the last year.

You're such a moron, friend.

>not OP

Thanks bud.

I was 28 when my book was published and now I'm 29.

I wouldn't consider myself or any of my work to be genius. Nor would I try to measure up to any of the past authors that have influenced my work. I think that's way out of my hand and left for the readers to decide. However, I do take comfort in knowing that my work is somewhat commercially successful.

Have you had any success with your short stories? Wishing you the best of luck.

Don't worry friend, alcohol in large volumes is potent enough to make one troll proof.

What have you spent your earnings on so far? What country are you from?

I've experienced a tiny bit of renown with the third story, because it was published on a podcast. Nothing major. However, I have several stories out for submission to some very good publications, and to be published in any one of them would probably be fairly major for my career. So here's hoping.

I'm curious about the company, I have ideas that involve unique printing techniques and I want a company that's open to those types of risks

Born and raised in the US.

I mainly spend my earnings on necessities. No large purchases, yet. I like to look at my finances conservatively. My idea is to save the money I've earned so that I can be financially free in the near future and spend my time pursuing creativity rather than another pay check to survive. It might be a bit boring, but if I really make it big some day I might just have to splurge on a fancy home.

These are exciting times you are living in. It sounds like you've been consistent in writing your stories and are taking the right steps to advance your career. Do you plan on writing a novel? I don't know if I am being biased when I say that novels are published more often than short stories.

You would need a larger company to take a risk like that. Without trying to sound callous, I would be afraid that a company would see it as more of a gimmick and have a difficult time trying to market the book as something with a unique print over its content. Then again I don't know the specifics that you have in mind so I can only wish you good luck.

I'm doing great. I've found that it's a lot easier to market a book than it is to write one. I see this is your work? Let's take a gander.

How long have you been writing for? Have you studied at a tertiary institution? What did you study?

How many publishers did you send your manuscript to?

What's your book about?

I've done a lot more reading that writing in my life. I was 23 when I began writing short stories that will probably never see the light of day. I must have written hundreds of them in the span til I began working on a novel at age 27.

I attended Hopkins Marine Station out in Stanford for a while but I dropped out. You can guess what I was studying.

I already had in mind a specific publisher that I wanted to handle my work so I dealt with them directly. I guess my stars aligned just right.

More about my work a bit later.

Actually I'm going to elaborate a bit here because it's getting late and before I come down from the booze.

It's absolutely important that you research your publisher and if possible reach out to as many people that you can who are affiliated with said publisher. I don't mean that you should attempt to shove your work in front of their faces but you should attempt to have meaningful discussions with them about their thoughts on the industries that they specialize in. Then when the time comes to submit you will only need to give them a gentle reminder and they will seek out your work on their own. Provided that it reaches the proper channels you have now increased your success rate for getting published dramatically. Of course this is under the assumption that your novel is slightly above average work.

Kek.

what was your creative process for writing the novel? how did you know when it was done? What made you decide to write a novel?

I'll so some research, I think it would seem gimmicky but that's kind of the point and it might make sense with knowledge of the work.

I'm mainly curious if there are extra fees or % payment reductions for something like a few pages of high gloss for pictures or something (it's not that exactly but it's in that realm if there is such a realm).

I'm also in the mindset that I should have the book finished before submitting it, is that necessary? I read some posts saying they submit it before its finished a plan for marketing and then they get a deadline, if that's the way it's always done then I could probably start trying to submit it now for consideration though I'm not entirely sure how to indicate the special bullshit I was mentioning. Maybe I'll make some pdfs of the text and photoshop them.

>with a plan for marketing