Like many aspiring writers, I wrote my first novel before I fully understood the world of traditional publishing. I can’t say that I fully understand it now, but what I can say is that I understand it much better than I did before.

I invested almost two years writing and editing my debut novel, The Witch Hoax, and I submitted my query letter to a plethora of agents with confidence that my manuscript was good enough to be purchased by a publishing house.

After receiving my first couple of form rejection letters, I started vigorously researching the industry, wondering why the hell my “masterpiece” was being rejected by literary agents.

Turns out, there are many different reasons why a literary agent might reject a query letter. Most of the time, it has nothing to do with the quality of a manuscript. (I know this because none of them asked to see mine. So, maybe my query letter just sucked? Maybe. But often times, it doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of your querying either.)

Literary agents are busy people with many clients, and a lot of them work part time. According to a former literary agent (I’ll leave nameless here), their inboxes fill up with query letters fast, and sometimes they just can’t respond to all of them–which is understandable. Often, it’s just not what they’re looking for. However, another agent might be interested in what you have. It’s all about finding the right one–which takes time.

Querying, as I’ve learned, is not something for the impatient.

So, with undiminished confidence that my novel was a work of art, I researched further and discovered the world of self-publishing.

The first thing that struck me was the turn around time for self-publishing vs. traditional publishing. Traditionally publishing a novel can take over a year or longer to go from manuscript submission to the shelves of a book store. Since my novel is a satire of the current-day sociopolitical atmosphere, I needed to get it published and on sale in a timely fashion.

The second thing that stood out to me was the editing. When you secure representation from a literary agent, and they sell your manuscript to a publisher, in many ways it’s not your book anymore. Their editors can edit how they want. They design the cover, the blurb, and decide the final product. So, you lose a lot of that freedom and creative control that many of us writers value highly.

I won’t say that self-publishing is better than traditional publishing–because I plan to become traditionally published too–but for this particular novel, self-publishing was the only way to go. It had to be edited the way I wanted it to be edited, and it needed to be out before 2021.

After having this revelation, I hired a freelance copy editor, polished up my manuscript, designed a cover, started an account with Barnes and Noble Press, and within a month I launched my first novel. I’ve sold a couple dozen copies so far and have gotten some enthusiastic reviews. So, for this project, I believe I made the right choice to self-publish.