BAD AMERICANS by Tejas Desai-An Update on the Great American Pandemic Novel

On this Independence Day Eve, I have to report that things are not looking good for the prospects of my latest book BAD AMERICANS being conventionally published. I haven’t gotten a single hit among the 50 agents or so I sent queries to several months ago. The ones who deigned to give a non-form response told me that the massive Great American Pandemic Novel was too long to be conventionally published.

Apparently, anything over 120,000 words is virtually impossible to publish right now, let alone a novel and short story collection in one, which is unheard of and doesn’t fit into a defined bookstore category. One agent even told me to constrict it into 80,000 words — it is currently 260,000 words. Even with dramatic editing, that’s practically impossible unless I write a different book.

I hoped that my momentum of winning 15 indie literary awards for my last novel The Dance Towards Death would cruise me into a major publication and Pulitzer Prizes/National Book Awards as a kind of natural progression of artistic ascent, especially for an ambitious Magnum Opus like BAD AMERICANS, but this was apparently just wishful thinking. That’s not how the literary world works, at all.

I conveniently looked past the risk-averse, rigid and bureaucratic nature of the publishing industry which is the very reason I independently published 5 books over 8 years. I hoped DEI would help the prospects for the most DEI book ever written, but yet again, this promise was exposed as a front and a lie. It appears the major publishers don’t care about true diversity in fiction, and certainly not when there’s innovation and raw realism involved.

I’ve also sent BAD AMERICANS, meaning the whole manuscript, edited/half versions, and the individual stories out to indie publisher contests, but these have also resulted in rejection so far, and I’m not hopeful for a hit. These contests have also been very expensive — the fees for each contest range from $25-$80. I’m basically subsidizing their companies when that money would traditionally be used to promote my own works or those of other New Wei writers I admire. And it’s likely I could build a bigger profile and readership for BAD AMERICANS through The New Wei even if a small publisher does accept it.

Of course, sending BAD AMERICANS directly to the People has resulted in a much different outcome. Massive amounts of sensitivity (I hate this word — I prefer identity?) readers and beta readers have read and thoroughly commented on both the individual stories and the 1000 page book as a whole. How much did they charge? Nothing at all. In fact they were thrilled to participate in and aid this important project.

The 12 internal stories, most of which are novelettes or novellas, have been universally praised. I have gotten some criticisms on the frame story, particularly the long food and activity descriptions, and these will be edited. But even those critical readers finished the massive novel and admired it on the whole (meanwhile, the so-called publishing professionals have done absolutely nothing for this work).

In fact, one retired librarian read the 1,000 page tome two times, including giving me extensive line-by-line feedback the second time, and now wants to read it a third time. And she loved the individual stories so much that she adapted two, with my permission, and gave them to her book club to read and discuss. Now that’s dedication!

So essentially, I am at yet another crossroads. Do I keep trying to get the book conventionally published, which will likely take many years if it ever happens at all, or do I go it alone yet again and build The New Wei along with it? In particular, self-publishing BAD AMERICANS will be a huge endeavor due to its size, scope and components, likely one of the greatest self-publishing projects ever undertaken.

Well, you know I love a great challenge.

At this point, barring some miracle (and a few have happened to me), for the next six months I’m going to plan to do a final revision of the frame story and rebuild or confirm my team for the large publishing project. Perhaps I will send out 50 more queries to agents and here and there enter a contest — seems like a waste of time and money but I suppose you never know, I could get lucky.

Under the Grand Design, one story would be published as a Kindle ebook for each month of 2025 and then the whole book would be published in two volumes, in multiple formats, six months apart in 2026. That would be an all-consuming 2 year publishing project consisting of 18–20 distinct publications (possibly one with the whole work too, meaning potentially over 20) involving the same book.

Now that would be dedication!

We’ll see — I reserve the right to revise timelines, elements, and paths, but as you all know, once I get a plan for a project in my mind, almost nothing except divine intervention (and perhaps not even that) can stop me.

My goal all along has been to create a massive oeuvre like Balzac’s The Human Comedy, Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County books and Dostoyesky’s St. Petersburg works. Waiting around for publishers to take notice on a whim will likely never fulfill my ambitions, let alone my additional one of promoting other great indie literary writers I admire.

I hope to have help with this great enterprise, but other than my magnificent team and my growing number of wonderful fans, I’m not going to plan on it! :( #literature #books #publishing #thehumantragedy #BadAmericans #authors