There are no constants. Not so long ago, if you wrote fiction and you wanted to get it published, you had to find an agent. Agents were the doorkeepers, and it was a rare soul indeed who got something published in the traditional manner without one. Your only other option was to resort of a ‘vanity press,’ which was just about what it sounds like. For a price, they would print your manuscript without regard for its merits or the lack thereof, bind it into the cover of your choosing and sell you as many copies as you liked. You could put them on your bookshelf and send one to your mother, but good luck getting anyone else to look at them.

Door number one or door number two.

Now there is another door. Door number three is commonly called ‘indie publishing.’ Write it yourself, as before, and then either edit it yourself or hire someone else to do it for you, and then engage with some beta readers. Make your changes. Buy an ISBN, upload to KDP or one of the other providers, run (and pay for) the ads yourself, and so on.

For me, the only fun part of this whole Dumpster fire is the writing. All the other stuff feels a whole lot like work.

But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Entire genres have moved to indie publishing. A lot of romance and sci-fi writers are now paddling their own canoes, and many crime fiction and mystery writers are following the trend.

So it goes.

I have just (indie) published my eighth novel, Catching The Deuce. Inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, my story is set in The Bronx, and it centers around two Little League baseball players who get embroiled, more or less against their will, in the search for a dead mobster’s missing and presumably buried fortune. But what Catching The Deuce is really about is the character and toughness required of children who grow up in challenging circumstances.

I hope you’ll give it a try.