I think this qualifies as an FAQ as I’ve had several people contact me about publishing. Specifically, my publishing choice. Those must have been good questions because I didn’t have an answer.
I think the common wisdom of those who are not writers is that, when the book is finished, the author calls a publishing company, such as Simon and Schuster, And tells the person on the other end of the line, “Okay, it’s ready.” Yeah. That’s not exactly how it works.
As I was getting toward the end of writing Dead by Monday (the 947th revision, so about half way through) I looked into the actual way it was done. And by ‘it’ I mean the traditional publishing process. The process followed by the ‘Big Five’ publishing houses. This is where writing changes from being an artistic endeavor to being strictly business. It no longer matters that you know twenty-seven different ways to write ‘He walked…’
The first step is generally to find an agent to represent you. An agent is a person with a vocabulary so vast they can say nice things about you when they barely even know you. More truthfully an agent 1) knows good writing when they see it, and 2) is willing to approach their contacts in the publishing industry about getting your work published. In essence, they are willing to risk any credibility they have forged with those contacts, to recommend your work. You can see why they might be somewhat guarded. The author approaches the potential agent through what’s known as a query letter. In that one-page letter, you need to present yourself and your book so well that it breaks through what’s known as the “Fortress of I Don’t Know You.” My investigations revealed that it can take anywhere from one to five years of constant query submission to finally get an agent.
Your agent must then try to convince one of their publishing contacts that your book could make them money. If the publisher turns you down, it doesn’t necessarily men you’re a bad writer. The publisher may turn the book down because yours is a slasher book and they will be releasing another slasher book in about six months and they don’t want the two books cannibalizing each other’s sales. They may turn it down because you’re not the writer you mother always said you are, or an almost infinite number of reasons in between. (“We like your story, Chainsaw Zombies, but could you rewrite it as a rom-com?”) My investigations further revealed that it can take anywhere from one to five years to find a traditional publisher willing to publish your book. Once that happens it might take a couple years to do final proofread, interior formatting, cover design and myriad other stuff before it hits the bookstores.
I was well into the sending-query-letters-to-potential-agents phase when I stopped to do the math. Let’s see. 4 years (est.) to find an agent, 4 years (est.) to land a publisher, 2 years to get it in their next catalog, that’s ten years. I wasn’t sure I had that many Christmases left.
This is when I discovered ‘Self-publishing.’ This may have sprung into being sometime around the advent of Amazon, or not. With self-publishing, you do all the editing and proofreading. You obtain and ISBN number. You compile all the information/disclaimers that go on the Colophon. You buy and learn to use a program to format the chapters, find a graphic design program you like and design front, back covers and spine. You need to sure you’re not using copyrighted images. How will you know? No sweat. The lawyer knocking on your door will be glad to explain it. Once your book is completely designed, you’ll need to convert it to epub so eBook readers can download it, and there’s just a bunch of other stuff you need to do. Of course, if you made a mistake (or more) along the way you may need to start all over.  How long will that take? Do you really want to invest the time and effort?
Of course, you can always find an editor and pay them to do the editing. You can find a cover designer and pay them to produce a killer cover, and so-on for every necessary task. Let’s assume for arguments sake that each person you hired excels at their specific task an is not a con-artist. That could never happen. Right? And, you also may not hire the right person on the second attempt. Third?
For many things, I’m a proponent of paying an expert rather than doing something myself. With each passing year more tasks get moved into that bucket. No matter how fun and easy that YouTube video makes it seem, I will still happily pay someone to clean and service my septic tank. How can an author minimize the risk?
Enter the world of hybrid publishing. Currently, there is a lot of debate about whether hybrid publishing is actually publishing or not. You position on this should whole-heartedly be, who cares. To avoid harsh words with a fellow author, possibly ending with a duel at dawn, I have had ‘success’ using the term ‘self-publishing services.’ Success being a euphemism for never having been shot at dawn. A hybrid publishing/self-publishing services company has experienced people with every skill you will need to get your book published. If you have done your job correctly (picking an honest company) these people will have a proven record of success. If you just want the cover design, I don’t think you need to buy the whole package. You may be a talented graphic artist and know how to do it cold, but you may need two or three of their other services, just ask. And because all of these artisans work for the same company, if something does go bad, you will have only one throat to choke. Easy-peasy.
This is exactly what I did and I could not have been happier with the results. Everyone who worked on it was a talented professional. They knew what to do. I was involved in almost every aspect so that the book is exactly what I wanted. I also got to see the book published in my lifetime. (Big plus) What I did not get was the promotion and marketing support authors get from traditional publishing. I can’t tell you how hard it’s going to be because nothing I’ve tried so far has worked.
I hope this explains why I took the path I did to get my book published. Does my logic sound reasonable? Possibly? Doesn’t matter because it’s a lie.
Here’s the truth. In more than forty years of working in industry, I found one thing in business was most important. It wasn’t cost, it wasn’t delivery, it wasn’t features. It was relationship. If the parties trust each other, they will continue working together in spite of occasional hiccups.
It took fours years (off and on) to finish my first novel. I couldn’t say with any certainty there would be a number two. When an agent considers a writer for representation, they are looking for writer that is serious and disciplined. They aren’t in it for fun. They are looking for a writer that is worth their while to form a relationship with. They are risking their credibility with their contacts that your second book will be equally well written, and your third. They will be delivered on schedule.  That you will be a good long-term client. They will enjoy some long-term cash flow by helping you out. I didn’t know if I could promise that.
In the same way, a publisher who takes you on is hoping he will at least break even with your first book, make even more because your second book will outsell the first and the same with the third and beyond. I didn’t know if I could promise that.
That’s when I quit sending query letters. Because my personal ethics wouldn’t allow me to continue.
And now you know…the rest of the story.

Mark April 25 on your calendar. I will be once again doing a book signing at BookSmart. This time it's at their now Eastridge location. Now that you've had a chance to read the book, come by and tell me all the details I got wrong (authors love that). If you don't yet have a copy of the book, I have copies that I will be happy to autograph for you. Hope to see you there.

I’m back from Left Coast Crime and had a great time. It’s open crime readers as well as crime authors so the readers and writers can meet and get to know each other. About 300 folks (my rough estimate) came and I met some terrific people. Whether they had published 20+ books or still working on their first, everyone was very supportive. I highly recommend it if you ever get a chance to attend. Next year it will be in Santa Fe, NM, April 1-4.

John’s Grill is a landmark in San Francisco, famous because it’s mentioned in Dashiell Hammett’s Maltese Falcon. A group of us from Central Coast Writers (Pacific Grove, CA) went mostly for the experience.

They even have a small display honoring the book

The Usual Suspects

“Sam Spade went to John’s grill, asked the waiter to hurry up his order of chops, baked potato and sliced tomato…”—Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon)
I added the Old Fashioned just for color.

The next morning was a breakfast for new authors. As I was one of the forty new authors, I got to stand up and introduce my book in front of the attendees.

On Saturday, I was part of a writer panel titled, “Labels: Cozy, Traditional, Suspense or Thriller?” I Had fun, learned a lot and gained additional respect for the other genres.

I will be attending the Left Coast Crime Writers Conference at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco. It Starts Feb. 25 and runs until March 1. As you can guess, it focuses on books (fiction and non-fiction) about crime.
Learn more here: https://leftcoastcrime.org/
The location changes each year and this year it is in San Francisco. Check the web page to see if one of your favorite writers will be there. It would be a great chance to meet and talk with them. Hope to see you there.

Thanks for the question. I first became aware of the disdain for prologues years ago so I went back and changed my prologue to chapter one. The next four books I read had prologues. Needless to say, this resolved nothing for me.

When a group of writers gather there is always the risk that the topic of prologues will come up. If that happens, I try to switch the discussion to current politics or whether the Catholic church is a cult to prevent discussions from getting heated.

Why is there so much push-back on prologues? Possibly because so many writers use them for the wrong reasons. Ideally, a prologue contains something mysterious or suspenseful that makes the reader think, I need to find out why this happened.

Years ago, author Sue Coletta (See the acknowledgement section in my book) listed some reasons for correctly using a prologue.

Reasons for using a prologue are not;

Do I really care one way or the other about using prologues? Until recently I didn’t think so.

Speaking solely from my experience as a reader, the primary justification for using a prologue is to improve the reader’s enjoyment of the story. Which, of course, echoes the reasons for anything done in constructing a manuscript. Regardless of what CMOS suggests concerning formatting, punctuation, incomplete sentences, etc., I will deviate if I think it will make the scene clearer/more enjoyable for the reader. I’d like to suggest that using a prologue has nothing to do with the mechanics of writing but is a matter of your story structure. Use it if it helps you tell a better story.

Consider a mystery where present day murders are linked by similarities to a string of murders in 1940s New Orleans. Rather than inserting a scene to have a detective remember it and notice the link (or have someone remember it for him) and have to describe it to the team, etc. and stop the action, those long-ago murders might be a candidate for a prologue. The prologue does not necessarily have to include your lead character or any recurring character for that matter. But at some point it does have to provide insight into your main story. A prologue needs to have a purpose for being there just like every other part of a story.

Where does that leave us? Just shut-up and call it chapter one? If the prologue was written for the wrong reasons, that may be the best advice. As a reader, seeing the title prologue, when used properly, alerts me (remember the bit above about reader enjoyment) that this is a special part of the text and should be considered in a different manner. Simply labeling it chapter one might rob the reader of that opportunity.

Some readers claim they never read prologues because they are often poorly written. That might be true. But if the prologue is poorly written, I’d suspect that the rest of the novel is trash-can worthy as well. I’m considering poor writing to be a different case than a justification for not using it. Some don’t read prologues because they’re not considered part of the real story. If that’s your experience, you be you. I’m not going to force you to like cauliflower either.

Given this, it’s entirely reasonable to accept that, if the majority of prologues a reader has encountered were done without valid justification, they may have developed a negative opinion of them. If the converse was the case, the reader may believe prologues have their place.

To simply say that a section of text beneath the heading, prologue, is bad, without considering its content, while allowing that same text would be somehow acceptable if the heading had been chapter one, indicates a personal bias and not a well-reasoned understanding of writing.

Comments welcome.

In November My two fantastic daughters surprised me by organizing a launch party for Dead by Monday. I hadn’t planned on having one because I had no idea what it entailed.
Fortunately, things like that don’t slow my daughters down. They arranged a venue, decorated it with balloons coordinated with colors of the book cover, created plot-specific decorations, printed invitations and sent them to friends, provided world class munchies, and were the perfect hosts.

Welcome! This is how guests were greeted. Classy, huh.

My daughters possibly strong-arming a patron who wandered in (She may have been lost)

One of the food tables they prepared

Pen at the ready, I’m ready for the first customer

And here he is.

When it was over, here I am being asked for my charge card

In October, Booksmart, my local indie bookstore hosted a booksigning for local authors. As it was my first, I didn’t know what to expect but it was a lot of fun. As you can see from the image below, there are a lot of other authors in the area.

These are some of the books written by the showcased authors. I bought several although my ‘To-be-read’ book list is already quite long.

In August of this year my first novel, Dead By Monday, was published. Look for it on the shelves of your favorite book store.

If you don’t see it they can special order it and probably get it to you in just a couple days. It can also be ordered online through Amazon, Barnes and Nobel or your favorite source. It’s available in hardcover, paperback or Kindle ebook. It may be a while before it’s available through your local library. I hope you enjoy it.

After you’ve read it I would greatly appreciate it if you could post an honest review on one of the following online sites.

Amazon.com
https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Monday-CR-Foster/dp/B0FN6Y6HGH/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.-UJA3GATIsO3Z52I8e_DBfWmVsYET54o5q3m3AD55aoJ81DePQIzqN5Ps2_2sCoOXG2khypfA74DKcltXTbLqaVyT5mXz1_Rh6g7Zn1ZHpBDgkgjp7CaNUdld1BdErsLJYNOd04mJLfsA9cCOSP6PA.oJFqHpzyccF6lvYnOaQ-UFbQCBs1AuvYt__dfx8iNd8&dib_tag=se&keywords=dead+by+monday+foster&qid=1764614155&sr=8-1

Barnes and Nobel (You will need a B&N account)
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dead-by-monday-cr-foster/1148092938?ean=9798886798913

Goodreads.com
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/240424231-dead-by-monday