Adrian Stephens's Blog - Posts Tagged "harry-potter"

We all value our time. We have so precious little of it to spend doing what we want to do, that none of us want to feel like we’ve wasted it. For us readers, as much as some of us seem to devour everything in sight, we still don’t want to spend our time on a book with a poorly developed plot, weak characters, or worse, such poor editing that we can’t stay in the story long enough to find out if the book is even any good. Because our time is so precious, we don’t want to waste it on a self-published novel, right?

Not necessarily, although there was a time when I admittedly would have thought the same thing. It is easy for us to come to the conclusion that, if an author is self-published, it can only be because they couldn’t get picked up by a traditional publisher, right? I can’t speak for everyone, but in my case I can say that theory is wrong. Could I be picked up by a traditional publisher? I can’t honestly answer that, because I never tried.

All I can speak for is my own situation, but I would be more than happy to share my story with you. I’ll save how I came about writing In My Shoes for another day, and focus on the publishing decision today. I was about halfway through my first novel when I decided I should have a plan for how to get my book out there. I began with researching book publishers. That didn’t look so promising. After a while, I started researching agents. For the most part, both the publishers and the agents had a theme; it was apparent to me that most of the publishers and agents felt inundated with material. Everyone thinks they can write and they all send their work in to be the next big author. The publishers and agents, for the most part, have taken the stance that wannabe authors can feel free to send in their manuscripts, and they will go to the bottom of the slush pile. Someday, somebody just might open it, and if they like what they see, they may read a few pages. If that grabs them, they may read a little more. For those select few who make the cut, they will contact you, and a year (or two) later, your book may just get published.

Reading that was pretty discouraging. At that point, I decided I should at least consider publishing the novel myself. I mean, I am very detail oriented, thorough, and I was confident that I could learn the process and publish my book myself. What I found was, though I could do it myself, it was going to be very costly. Not that I didn’t expect costs, but I didn’t realize how much. It’s just not cost effective to print 100 books at a time. In order to make a profit, you have to buy in bulk, and even at a discounted rate, bulk purchasing means bulk dollars spent. In addition to the cost of the book printing, there are the costs of the ISBN numbers and business licenses, to name a few. Everything had a cost. Meanwhile, I kept writing. I knew that regardless, I was going to finish my novel and I was going to get it out there, one way or another.

As the end of my novel neared, I began doing more research. I had been leaning fairly heavily on going through the process of trying to get traditionally published. I figured I had spent a year writing it, so what did it matter if it took a while to get published? It would cost me significantly less to send out manuscripts to all of the publishers.

Almost exactly one year later, I had reached the end. The book was done, and I was satisfied I had a good book. Not an okay book. A good book. One that people would pick up and enjoy. Was it Harry Potter? No. Was it Hunger Games? No. It may never be a best seller, but I felt it was good. I still hadn’t decided on traditional or self-publishing, but I knew that, after a year of hard work, I wasn’t going to send it anywhere without it being as flawless as possible. So, I found a team of editors, qualified and willing to edit my book and tell me everything they thought was wrong with the book. It took six more months for editing. First, I edited the book as thoroughly as possible. Then I printed copies for each of my editors to mark up as they saw fit. Once I had all of the copies back, I made the corrections and took some of the suggestions into consideration. Once I was done, I edited the entire book again. The book was edited several times, at different levels, until I was confident that the book was ready (and yet I still have found a few errors). By the time I had the book ready, I had decided to undertake publishing the book myself. I had saved enough money to get my first printing, I could keep control over the final product and I had done enough research to realize I could do this.

One month later, In My Shoes was available on Kindle. Two months after that, it was available in hardcover at Amazon and on my website. Now, the book is available in all major digital formats, and the hardcover is available at a few select locations, with more to come.

I could write all day about Traditional vs. Self-Publishing, because as a self-published author, I have become increasingly aware of the connotation attached to the term. There are some who choose to read primarily self-published novels and some who don’t care where the book comes from. Most people still seem to prefer traditional authors because they feel there is a quality that comes from the screening process. I would agree with that in a lot of cases. But ask yourself, have you never read a bad book from a traditional publishing house? Have you never read a traditionally published book that was poorly edited? I can tell you, I’ve read a great series, a best-selling series, and each of the four books had significant, blaring mistakes.

If you are still with me (thank you by the way), you are probably asking, “Is there a point to this rant, Adrian?” Yes, there is. Thank you for asking! My point is this; there are plenty of things to judge a book by, whether it be the cover, the synopsis, the preview chapters, or the ratings of other customers who have read and reviewed it. No longer will I judge a book solely by the fact that it took a different route to the stores. I would ask you to do the same.

When I first decided I wanted to write, or I should say, when my first novel neared completion, I decided it would be important to research all of the possibilities that were available to me for getting my work out there.

I've talked plenty in previous blogs about that experience, so I won't get into it here. What I found, though, was that much like cliques in high school, everyone in the publishing industry wants to know where you fit in.

No matter whether you submit to a big publisher or you self-publish and sell through retailers and distributors yourself, fitting in is very important.

I always found this quite odd. If you want to get your story out there right now, you have a much better chance of getting published and getting shelf space, it seems, if your characters wave a wand, like the taste of blood, have wings, fangs or maybe all of the above.

High fantasy is the popular thing right now. No, not everyone likes it, but there are a LOT who do. Publishers, booksellers...they want to know what they can put your book next to. There's no place in the corner for the little book with no friends.

As a writer, I have never once thought, what can I do that is like everything else out there. Okay, I guess that's not totally true. I have an idea for an American tie-in to Harry Potter that I would love to do one day. Only because I have some original ideas I really like and think it could be fun.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing the authors who write in these genres. It works for them, and that's great. Plus, there's an audience for it.

My only question is, do we still care about stories that aren't the saturated idea of the moment? And that's the only real question for me. I'm not trying to say that my ideas are totally unique. I don't know that any idea is totally unique. Harry Potter wasn't the first story of wizardry. Twilight wasn't the first story about vampires. My first novel, In My Shoes, has had several comparisons to a modern day Freaky Friday, but with a boy/girl twist. I'm okay with that.

But where do you put that on the shelf? There isn't a body swap section at the book store. Freaky Friday is a great story, but it's been around awhile, and isn't currently taking up critical space at Barnes & Noble.

I guess what I'm hoping is, if the idea is good, and the writing is good, it won't matter that it isn't the pop fiction of the moment. We love what we love. If we love vampire stories, we are going to look for vampire stories. But, there's room on your shelf for something different, right?

That's what I'm hoping. That in this huge world, there's room not only for the popular books, but maybe the one in the corner too.