Publish and promote a book of fiction with a heroine who ...
Publish and promote a book of fiction with a heroine who has trichotillomania--compulsive hair pulling.
Q1: It's hard enough to convince agents and publishers to take a chance on new writers, but a subject as misunderstood as this one is even harder to sell. If I can hire my own publicist, they'll be much more likely to take a chance on me.
Idea Description
There are several excellent non-fiction books about trichotillomania (TTM), a disorder shared by 40 million people worldwide, but there are no novels with characters who have it unless they're portrayed as neurotic freaks. My novel features a heroine who'll be a positive role model for all the people who suffer in shame and secrecy because they don't know how common it is and are told by their uninformed doctors that they're mentally ill. I want to use this book of popular fiction to raise awareness of TTM in the general public.
What will you do if you win $10,000 for this idea?
I'll use it to hire a publicist who can help me promote my book once it's published. This will help me get a literary agent who can attract a publisher with a promotional budget and the ability to get national media interviews about why I included TTM in a book of contemporary women's fiction.
Vote for it now.
You don't need a publicist, you need an agent, the two being entirely different. It is the agent who negotiates a deal with your publisher and gets you paid, a publicist gets you into the public eye, which can help find a publisher, but cannot help you get a good deal.
Note about agents, you do NOT pay them... they take a cut of what the publisher pays you. If you agent is asking for fees, they are a scam artist.
Write a good story first, focus on plot and character, with the compulsion just being one facet of the character. Don't worry about making your character a role model, let the story develop as it will.
Then start shopping the story to agents and publishers.
another option is to take the sideways route... publish it yourself online, either in one lump or serialized in smaller chunks. If you know someone who does sequential art, you can even go the webcomic route.
If you go the net published route, you have several low to no cost options. If you go the publish in one big lump option you can use the free webspace provided f…moreor commercial use by Microsoft at officelive.com... if serialized you can use a blogging service like blogger or livejournal. you can possibly make money by selling ads as well as selling hard copies through lulu.com
Above all remember, if you are going to gain and keep an audience, story has to be primary.