When it's Time to Rebuild

I finished the fourth JR Johnson book over a year ago.
 
It wasn’t good enough.
 
So I started over. Since then the title has changed maybe five times. The tone of the book is very different. The point of view characters are different. Yesterday I wrote a new ending.
 
Casual observers may not realize how competitive the publishing world has become. OVER 1,000 BOOKS A DAY ARE SELF-PUBLISHED ON AMAZON. Many of the books now are written by Artificial Intelligence, with little to no human intervention.
 
The most competitive space is: Novels.
That’s where JR Johnson lives. 
 
I’m looking for an agent for the new book and not self-publishing. I’ve gotten in the door of a couple agents, who read Better Than Even, but passed on it. Just getting in the door of a big-time agent is no small feat. One of the agents took the time to make some very helpful suggestions.
 
If I go down the route of traditional publishing it will be a while before the fourth JR Johnson comes out. Maybe never. But it’s too much time and effort to write a novel and then throw it into the self-published mix with a thousand other new books the day it comes out.
 
Let’s compare novels to other genres.
 
One of my golf books: Hit Your Second Shot First is my best seller. It sells every day with no advertising or promotion costs. I had an offer from a publisher but rejected it because I do better self-publishing.
 
Second in my sales rankings is Be Sincere Even When You Don’t Mean It, which has a bit of a cult following, and third is The 10 Greatest Golfers of All Time.
 
Why does a little 16,000-word golf book outsell the 80,000-to-100,000-word novels? Because it’s in a niche, and people search on Amazon for golf books as gifts for a father, husband, or friend. I thought the paperback format would be 99% of sales, but a lot of people read it in eBook as well.
 
Remember, I’m not competing only with human authors. AI is writing. But from what I’ve seen artificial intelligence isn’t very good at humor yet.
 
Meanwhile does anybody know an agent? There’s a dance an author has to go through to get an agent to look at a manuscript, it’s as formal as a minuet, and it starts with something called a Query Letter. I’m starting to send out the Queries.
 
If you’re looking for a gift for that hard to buy for golfer on your gift list, consider
Hit Your Second Shot First. It was deliberately priced to be competitive with a Father’s Day Card, and it won’t get thrown out as soon as you have your back turned. I'm told the book is suitable for being re-gifted, or as an addition to the powder room bookshelf of a vacation home.
Link: www.amazon.com/dp/B09CGMTCBQ