When traditional publishing breaks your heart but indie publishing terrifies you

A third option for those stuck in that liminal space

We need to have an honest conversation about the gap.

Lately, the advice given to frustrated writers has become incredibly polarized. On one side, you have the traditional publishing purists telling you to just keep querying, keep collecting rejections, and write a completely new manuscript from scratch while the industry consolidates around you!!! It’s fine! Just wait it out and something big will happen!

Meanwhile, the months tick by, and the cycle continues. Query. Wait. Rejection. Move on. Query. Wait. Rejection.

Repeat.

On the other side, you have the indie publishing evangelists yelling at you to just upload your damn book to Kindle Direct Publishing tomorrow, design your own covers, and become a marketing guru overnight!

It’s so easy, right?!

But what if you are stuck somewhere in the middle?

What if traditional publishing is breaking your heart, but the sheer volume of work required to successfully indie publish makes you want to crawl under your desk?

What then?

Indie publishing is a beautiful, viable path, but it is still a business. It requires capital, technical know-how, and a total shift in mindset from artist to CEO. If you are not ready to take on that mountain just yet, that is completely okay.

But staying in the traditional submission vortex while expecting a different result is a very swift recipe for burnout too.

If you are caught in this specific in-between season, here are four powerful ways to keep moving forward, protect your peace, and build momentum without launching a full-scale publishing house (which I threaten to do literally every other day).

1. Shift to the Slow Query and Treat It Like a Side Hustle

When we are on submission or querying, it consumes our entire emotional bandwidth. We refresh our inbox every eleven seconds. (Or is that just me?) Instead of letting the industry dictate your daily mood, put your traditional publishing goals on a low-latency cycle. Limit your querying or agent outreach to exactly one day a month. Send out three to five highly intentional, hyper-targeted pitches, close the spreadsheet, and do not look at it again until the same date next month. By lowering the stakes and slowing the cadence, you take back your creative energy and stop letting an empty inbox control your life.

2. Enter High-Value, Blind-Reviewed Fiction Contests

If you are tired of your queries disappearing into the black hole of an assistant’s slush pile, look for reputable literary contests that offer blind judging. Contests like the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, or genre-specific prizes run by established organizations judge the work entirely on the prose, not your social media follower count. ven better, look at Book Pipeline—their contests are run by some of my favorite humans on the planet, and they are brilliant at evaluating unpublished manuscripts purely on the strength of the concept and story arc. Winning or even placing as a finalist in a prestigious contest instantly changes your leverage. It gives you a credential that forces traditional agents and editors to actually read your manuscript rather than skimming your platform stats.

3. Build Your Minimum Viable Audience on Substack

Guess what? You don’t necessarily have to launch an entire book to start gathering your people. Use this in-between time to build the one asset that will protect you regardless of which publishing path you eventually choose: a direct line to readers. Start sharing your writing journey, your character sketches, or the historical research behind your book right here. Instead of focusing only on the book, you’re sharing more of yourself. If you can gather five hundred people who love how your mind works, you will have the confidence to either walk back into a traditional pitch meeting with real leverage, or finally make the leap to indie publishing with a built-in audience waiting for you.

4. Invest in an Independent Developmental Edit

When a book does not sell traditionally, we often internalize it as a personal failure of talent. But often, the book is just missing a sharp, objective external eye that isn’t trapped in the New York marketing echo chamber. Take some of the emotional energy you are wasting on the submission cycle and invest it in hiring a high-quality, independent developmental editor. (This is a service I offer, and it is one of my favorite things to do!) Work with someone who can help you push the boundaries of your story and make it salable, not just readable. Polishing your craft in a safe, non-commercial space reminds you why you started writing in the first place: because you love the story.

5. Pitch Op-Eds or Essays to Online Publications

Instead of letting your manuscript gather digital dust while you wait on agents, use its core concepts to build your public footprint. If you are writing nonfiction, look at what is trending in the news right now or look at the specific topics you are an expert in, and pitch a timely take to online outlets. If you write fiction, dissect your book’s primary themes to see if you can write an essay that ties directly back to the heart of the story. If your novel deals with a complicated family dynamic, an intense subculture, or a specific historical event, write a personal essay or commentary piece about that theme for places like Salon, HuffPost, or The Rumpus. You get a quick publishing win, and you can include a bio at the bottom that points thousands of new readers straight back to your platform.

Remember: You are still in the driver’s seat of your career, even when you’re parked. Stepping back to figure out your next move is an incredibly powerful business strategy.

Let me know in the comments: Are you currently sitting in this in-between space? What is your biggest fear about staying or making the leap?

Let’s talk about it.

With you, every step of the rocky way.

Rea