I have something in common with a lot of people out there in the world – we want to be full time writers. Not necessarily successful, not necessarily filthy rich (both of these are desirable but optional), but we all want to do what we love, as a profession. Some of us have what it takes, some of us don’t. I am not here writing about those who don’t – that is a very personal journey, and we should all at least have a chance at getting properly assessed, and have the appropriate experience and perhaps training, to come to a definitive decision.
I am writing this blog to you, the person in my situation, and I am assuming you have what it takes.
About a year and a half ago I made a fair number of friends of people like you, and several of them have become as close a friend as you can get while not being on the same continent. We spent a lot of time coaching each other and participated in short story challenges – all of this has become invaluable in improving our mastery of the craft, and we all had/have other projects. Then, not sure how long ago, we explored POD and other publishing concepts, and one of us actually published his first novel, via POD, and learned much from the exercise. While none of us have published through traditional publishing houses, we all have much to share with others.
So, we created a Guild, based on a more confined Guild we were previous members of, and we call ourselves the International Fantasy Writers Guild – because fantasy is the prime genre among us. We are, however, equally comfortable with Science Fiction, and any number of genres and subgenres in that space. The purpose of the Guild is twofold – to supply the usual shared community networking that sites like that provide, but with two important differences – firstly, with membership regions so that work can be discussed without ruining "first publishing rights" which can occur in open Internet sites; and secondly, we will form a POD group that will specialise in the genres aforementioned, and which will be particularly generous to author interests. We also will not compromise quality.
I have blogged this now as we are actually ramping up our activities and will in fact start publishing over the next coming weeks, perhaps few months.
We are still getting our proverbials together, but our intentions are clear, and we are able to publish ebooks, kindle, and softcover books now, if we want to.
I invite you to join us, or at least check us out. If you want to go the traditional path, be my guest – hey, even with this stuff happening, I would like that break myself, but I also believe there is a place here for those who want to publish, and also to learn by sharing with others.
This is the place to go, but it is still a bit rough. Email me and I can give you more information if you have any questions.
The Chronicles of Evyntyde 