Editing is almost finished for "The Plan"

At 2:14PM on August 18th I finished my second edit of a forthcoming novel called "The Plan." After nearly three years of design and writing, I'm hopeful to have "The Plan" published this fall/winter. The exact release date is still up in the air as I'm 1) reviewing the need (and cost) of a professional edit job, and 2) working out the details of a self-publishing contract with Book Surge (part of Amazon) or LuLu.

From the research I've done, getting your first book published is nearly impossible. You basically have to send your manuscript to every publisher in the world, hound them relentlessly, and pray that someone takes a chance. I don't have the time to do these things so I'm going down the self-publish route. Book royalties, which are extremely low, are higher for self publishing, but you have to do most (i.e. all) of your marketing, selling, and front a portion of the production costs. I'm still working on the contract with Book Surge (or LuLu), but I'll probably be paying $400-$700 to get my book published and into the marketplace. (Yes I'll most likely lose money. But I didn't write it for the money. I wrote it becasue of an interest in writing a book.) I plan on doing limited marketing (e.g. my blog) and sales (mostly word of mouth as I'm not a salesman) myself.

I'll give more details on what the book is about (and how to buy it) as fall/winter nears. But as a teaser "The Plan" is a clandestine effort (The Plan) to assassinate notorious criminals before the dysfunctional justice system mishandles the apprehension and conviction. I got the book idea many years ago while thinking about how the O.J. Simpson case would have been handled differently in a dictatorship (at the time Saddam's Iraq) rather than a democracy. More to come in the weeks and months ahead.