3 First-Time Self-Publishing Mistakes to Avoid

During our “Now What?” Months, we’re talking to Wrimos who’ve self-published their NaNoWriMo projects and asking them about the steps they took to make it happen. Today, participant and author  Joaquín Pineda  shares what he’s learned on the rocky road to self-publishing:

Finishing NaNoWriMo in 2008 felt like digging my fingers into the earth and flipping over a mountain. I grit my teeth until they chipped and I shaved years off my life expectancy.

Or at least that’s what it felt like, and with good reason. After twenty days of non-stop writing I put down fifty thousand words, more than anything I’d ever done before. The momentum was such that I wrote another sixty thousand by December 20th and completed the first draft of my novel MUTEKI – Sendero de los Campeones (Road of Champions). It was a suitable title for a project that almost singlehandedly rescued me from the pits of depression. In my mind I was a champion.

Or at least I was until I published the book and everything went to hell in a handbasket.

The aftermath of publishing my first NaNo novel in 2011 was a nightmare, a crime scene, a horror story. And that’s okay. I was exploring new territory, after all. Just as I was stumbling and fumbling through those first words on November 1st, 2008, I was stumbling and fumbling again as I faced new challenges.

So what went wrong? What was so catastrophic?

Don’t worry. I made you a list.

1. I delivered unpolished work.

The people in charge of printing my book were crystal clear: you have to turn this in ASAP or else it won’t come out on time. This shouldn’t have been an issue. If I pitched the book that’s because it’s ready, right?

You’re forgetting that…

2. I never hired a proofreader/editor.

This is embarrassing to say even six years after the fact, but I never bothered to look into paying an editor. Not even with “exposure”. I didn’t know one, I was broke, and I thought I would do a pretty decent editing job. Turns out I didn’t.

Looking back at the novel now, I’m noticing not only typos but pointless scenes, cringe-y dialogue, characters that change names halfway through, and–worst of all–sentences mangled by the “replace all” feature.

I promise to talk about this in depth if I ever get the chance. For now, let’s focus on my next mistake.

3. I didn’t ask for any proof copies.

Proof copies are your best friends. Without those you can’t preview the final product. That’s why the inside margins of my book were off and some pages came up blank due to terrible formatting. Some of the books were even missing pages.

But hey. I had a book.

As you can see, my first publishing experience was the work of an amateur and it’s still a source of mild embarrassment to this day. I only say “mild” instead of “I am moving to the mountains never to be seen again” because those days were some of the best in my entire life. I went on local TV and radio, I read at various conventions, libraries and book stores, I shook hands and took pictures with the mayor, they wrote about me on newspapers, and I made connections so valuable that we still talk and work on projects to this day. And yes, I did finally meet some editors.

Best of all, I could finally puff out my chest and feel like a writer, albeit a terrible one. Without that confidence and passion I wouldn’t have turned all this into a positive; you would be reading this on a subreddit for embarrassing confessions instead. That same gusto is what helped me write five more novel manuscripts-–three of them NaNo victories–-and around seventy short stories, all of which are probably still crap but decidedly better than my earlier work.

You will make mistakes. Trust me. Thankfully for us this isn’t hard science. There are no goal posts. It’s all about being in love with the worlds and the friends and foes in your head and giving them that breathing space they’ve been screaming for like a nest full of annoying little baby chicks.

This is indeed the “Road of Champions” not because we’re invulnerable, but because we are Muteki–”invincible” in Japanese. We will stagger, we will fall, but at the end of the day and come what may, we will write on and make the best art we can.

Go on now. Get some scars. Make some mistakes.

Good luck!

Joaquín Alberto Pineda is the author of MUTEKI and the upcoming short story collection Parables From a Stressed Out Artist, both self-published. He’s influenced by the work of Ernest Hemingway, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, James Ellroy, Juan Rulfo, and Raymond Chandler, among others. Joaquín currently resides in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico, where he works as a high school teacher. Visit his blog (in Spanish), Facebook (in Spanish), or Twitter (in English).

Top photo by Flickr user leasqueaky.