With great apologies to the Bard

To self-publish, or not to self-publish: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous critics, Or to take arms against a sea of rejection letters, And by giving it up (and doing it myself) end them? To die as an author: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks of continual rejection That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come Dreams of publishing contracts, the death of control of ones own output... When we submit to agents it seems like they must have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must they give us such pause: there's no respect That makes calamity of such long silence; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love of our prose, the law of publishing; delay, The insolence of their office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after rejection, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of (or someone who the writers group recommends)? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution to go through with putting our precious words on Kindle Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment that no one will otherwise read With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. - stay the 'publish' button and foolishly submit to yet another agent! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd.