A Self-Published Author's Guide to Self-Publishing--Part 3
Given lesson 1 (everyone will assume your self-published novel sucks) and lesson 2 (unless you somehow garner a lot of publicity no one will ever know you or your novel even exist) is there any reason why you should go ahead and self-publish anyway?
Well, yes.
First off, let’s assume your book actually is good passable readable—a stretch, I know, but bear with me. It wouldn’t be the first time the publishing industry was wrong about how well they thought a book would do. The publishing industry has paid obscenely large advances on books that tanked, and totally ignored books that went on to be best sellers and award winners. As a matter of fact, they’re wrong so often they should be weather men, or must at least have gone to the same school.
Let’s face it, writing is hard. You have about as much chance making it as a Big Name Author as you do a movie star--although if you’re already a movie star you could probably publish your laundry list and become a BNA. For most of us writing takes oodles of time, causes ulcers, depression, makes you a social leper, and hardly ever gets you laid. So it sucks when you go through all that and no one ever reads your work.
At worst, self-publishing will ensure that someone besides your mom reads it (and even mom may have lied). Before putting Darkside up as a Kindle download, I offered it on the net for free. To date it has over 30,000 hits on my website. It’s on a few different sites where you can download a .pdf version for free, and most of those have over 200 downloads or more. I get at least 5 or 6 requests for it or Darkside: Waking the Dead every week, and even a fan letter or two a day. And even thought it was absolutely free, I made about $1200 in Paypal donations. So at least I know someone has read it. Either that or mom has been really busy.
Secondly, there’s always the possibility that you could become the next Amanda Hocking (Although I’m not really certain even Amanda Hocking is the next Amanda Hocking. I have this conspiracy theory she’s really just a marketing ploy by Amazon to lull authors into uploading all their stuff to kindle. Of course I may be slightly paranoid biased when it comes to Amazon, given my recent past with them.) Amanda reportedly made about 2 million dollars in sales, and now has a 4 book deal with St. Martin’s Press reportedly worth another 2 million. (Unless Wikipedia is lying to me. Who knows, they may be in cahoots with Amazon.)
In our last instalment (tomorrow, if I get off my lazy...what?) I’ll talk about the possible downfalls (besides lesson 1 and 2) of self-publishing. I mean, seriously, what could possibly go wrong?
Well, yes.
First off, let’s assume your book actually is good passable readable—a stretch, I know, but bear with me. It wouldn’t be the first time the publishing industry was wrong about how well they thought a book would do. The publishing industry has paid obscenely large advances on books that tanked, and totally ignored books that went on to be best sellers and award winners. As a matter of fact, they’re wrong so often they should be weather men, or must at least have gone to the same school.
Let’s face it, writing is hard. You have about as much chance making it as a Big Name Author as you do a movie star--although if you’re already a movie star you could probably publish your laundry list and become a BNA. For most of us writing takes oodles of time, causes ulcers, depression, makes you a social leper, and hardly ever gets you laid. So it sucks when you go through all that and no one ever reads your work.
At worst, self-publishing will ensure that someone besides your mom reads it (and even mom may have lied). Before putting Darkside up as a Kindle download, I offered it on the net for free. To date it has over 30,000 hits on my website. It’s on a few different sites where you can download a .pdf version for free, and most of those have over 200 downloads or more. I get at least 5 or 6 requests for it or Darkside: Waking the Dead every week, and even a fan letter or two a day. And even thought it was absolutely free, I made about $1200 in Paypal donations. So at least I know someone has read it. Either that or mom has been really busy.
Secondly, there’s always the possibility that you could become the next Amanda Hocking (Although I’m not really certain even Amanda Hocking is the next Amanda Hocking. I have this conspiracy theory she’s really just a marketing ploy by Amazon to lull authors into uploading all their stuff to kindle. Of course I may be slightly paranoid biased when it comes to Amazon, given my recent past with them.) Amanda reportedly made about 2 million dollars in sales, and now has a 4 book deal with St. Martin’s Press reportedly worth another 2 million. (Unless Wikipedia is lying to me. Who knows, they may be in cahoots with Amazon.)
In our last instalment (tomorrow, if I get off my lazy...what?) I’ll talk about the possible downfalls (besides lesson 1 and 2) of self-publishing. I mean, seriously, what could possibly go wrong?
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