Beating the Self-Publishing Blues

In March, I am going to publish my debut novel, Rain on Your Wedding Day. Having your first book published should be an exciting, thrilling time in your life. But I don’t feel that way. I don’t feel much of anything other than worry, fear and dread.

What happens if it doesn’t sell a single copy? What happens if everyone I know hates it? What happens if it gets bad reviews? What if it becomes a byword for all that is bad about self-publishing?

I know that most of these doubts aren’t realistic, any more than the occasional fantasies I have about the book doing very, very well aren’t realistic. (Those involve having publishers and agents coming to my house and holding boom boxes over their heads and playing “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel as loud as it will go.) But they’re there. They bother me. They are probably clouding my judgment. And they are making what should be a proud and joyful moment a stressful and depressing time.

I think there are three reasons why this is so.

1. I am deeply unhappy that the book did not find a traditional publisher. I worked hard to get this book into the hands of a traditional publisher. I tried very hard to make the first draft work for a particular agent, who ended up not even reading it. I worked with two copy editors, a developmental editor, and a proofreader to get the manuscript into top form. I got on Twitter and tried to build my platform there. I went to a writer’s conference and pitched the book there. I researched probably two hundred agents, looking for the best fit. I worked hard on my query letter. I send individualized queries that focused on the agents’ stated interests. And I did all that work for nothing.

I wanted to land an agent and a traditional publisher. I wanted it more than I wanted to play first base for the Texas Rangers when I was ten. I wanted the validation and the sense of achievement that it would bring. I wanted to walk into a bookstore and see my books up on the shelf. I wanted glowing book reviews in major publications. I wanted book tours and radio interviews and a six-figure advance after a vicious bidding war. I wanted all of that, and I am not going to get any of it. It has been the most frustrating and disappointing thing that’s happened to me in the last ten years.

2. i didn’t want to self-publish. This is a corollary of #1, above, obviously, but it’s still true. Rain on Your Wedding Day is my third novel. I never got anywhere close to having the first two published, and after a while I quit trying. But I never self-published either one. It would have been an admission that I wasn’t good enough to get either one published. It would be the easy way out. It would have been a white flag. It would have been an inglorious surrender after an ignoble struggle.

I never wanted to self-publish. I still don’t. There’s a part of me that would rather have the book go down in total defeat and flaming wreckage than to put it out in the marketplace. I am choosing to self-publish, yes, but I am doing so reluctantly.

3. I don’t think the book is good enough. This is a function of the first two. I know the book isn’t good enough, because so many agents have turned it down. I know the book isn’t good enough, because I am having to self-publish it. Add in the standard anxiety than any author faces, and you have a veritable fruit cocktail of doubt and depression. If I did a better job writing the book, and there was an agent and a publisher who loved it, that would give me, well, a lot more confidence than I have now. I don’t have that, and that makes me much more anxious and depressed than I might otherwise be.

Those seem to me to be good, valid, sensible reasons to be, maybe, a bit depressed and downhearted about the prospect of self-publishing.

They are also counterproductive piles of bullshit.

Don’t ponder your mistakes or your sorrows; that only puts you in a depressed state of mind. And a depressed state of mind is not equipped to take advantage of that one moment that could arise and save your ass. – Robert Ludlum, The Road to Gandolfo

So what can I do to beat the self-publishing blues? Here’s what I have so far.

1. My attitude matters. Supposedly, when George Jones finished recording “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” he walked out of the studio saying, “Nobody’ll buy that morbid son of a bitch.” That didn’t matter. The song worked anyway, and even Jones credits it for saving his career. If the product is good enough, and if it’s backed by enough people who believe in it, maybe it doesn’t matter that much if the performer thinks it’s not that good. But in self-publishing, it’s all up to me. If I go into promoting this book thinking that it’s a loser, thinking that it won’t sell, that it’s all a giant failure just because some agent said it was, then I’m doomed even before I start. It’s a self-fullfilling prophecy. Wallowing in misery and despair is fun and all, but it’s not a luxury I can afford.

2. There’s nothing wrong with the book. There’s not. I was flipping through it the other day, looking for typos (and finding a couple, much to my chagrin). The emotional parts still ring true. The clever things I did are still clever. The characterizations are still honest. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good book and I think it will find an audience. I’ve spent too much time with the book to be totally fair and objective, but it’s a good book, too good to languish in a drawer forever. (And the cover is really, really good.)

3. I have the ability to be patient. I have three-year-old twins at home. If you’re not patient when you start out doing something like that, you learn it. I don’t have to have the book be a blockbuster right the first day it’s out. I can let it build an audience. I can find reviewers. I can take my time and not panic and have it do well over time.

4. It’s not a competition. So somebody else got a book published and I didn’t. Big deal. I’m not competing with that person. I’m not competing with somebody else’s self-published Young Adult book about a talking teenage octopus who gets octopus acne right before the Enchantment Under The Sea dance. I am who I am, my book is what it is, and neither of those things are defined by anyone else or their book. “I don’t believe in competition,” as Gary Clark, Jr. says. “Ain’t nobody else like me around.”

5. I can do the promotional end of it. I am not saying I will do a great job, or that I really relish it, but I can at least try to get the word out as best I can. Selling is a job, but at least it’s a fun job. (I say that as a lawyer.)

6. I don’t have to write another God-damned query letter ever again if I don’t want to. At least that’s all over with, for this project anyway. I have emerged from the Pit of Rejection, scarred and abused, but tougher and meaner. “What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger.” Yeah.

7. I can own the decision. It is my choice to self-publish. This is something that I want to do, and something that I have spent a good deal of time and money to achieve. I take full responsibility and ownership for this decision. Nobody made me self-publish, not the publishers, or the agents, or Amazon, or anyone else. I am doing this because I want to.

And who knows? It might just work out after all.

The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. — Lincoln