The $10,000 question

I have started the process of looking to self-publish my highly anticipated debut novel.  I have spoken with one firm, which is trying to sell me on the idea of a run of 1500 copies at around $10,000. The representative told me that a smaller run would not make any financial sense. I will check with other organizations to see if I am hearing the same thing.

I am also going to consider going the Kindle route.  What I need to know there is do I still retain 100 percent of my rights to the work.  If not, that is an issue for me as I still want to publish this novel in old-fashion book form.

My big dilemma comes if I am looking at an investment of $10,000 - which I do not have.  Kickstarter appears to be the way to go.  If I don't raise the funds, than Kindle would be my back up plan.

The big question - can I convince 500 people to give me $20?  I need to meditate a little more on the answer. 

And it happened like this

In the spring, one Chris Difford was soliciting some stories about imaginary friends. I believe that his intentions were to use those stories in a show. I thought nothing of it because I had never had an imaginary friend (unless you count fantasies about...never mind). The idea stuck around in my head and I found a story creeping down to my fingers. It turned into a story about an imaginary meeting with my son's birth mother. Through many tears I composed it and sent it to Chris. I don't know if he ever got it, but I put it away for a while. The subject shook me so heavily that I sobbed every time I read it.

Late in the summer, I realized that my writing had come to a grinding halt and I needed to leap out of the rut I had dug. I pulled out this short story. I fixed some words and sent it to a couple of magazines, including RED OCHRE LiT.

One magazine rejected it quite quickly. Then, I heard back from RED OCHRE LiT, from an intern who like the piece and asked a few questions for clarification. Immediately my hopes soared. I tried to stay realistic about the story, as I know that sometimes it can take weeks if not months to hear back from publishers and publications.

Today at lunch, I checked my email. I saw that RED OCHRE LiT had sent me a message. I covered my eyes, peeked through my fingers, and opened the message. It said congratulations, we love the story and want to publish it! It went on to tell me that they will get back to me about the specifics (publication date, any small changes, etc.). None of that matters at the moment. All I can think about is that some strangers, whose business is to publish literature, like my writing.