Indie publishing: the why’s in choosing the self-publishing route
I published my first book (a novel, literary fiction) almost eight years ago. It was not a very pleasant experience: to begin with the publishing house botched the launching of the book. It was supposed to happen at a large book fair. They ran out of batteries for the microphone. My book editor said to the girl who was responsible for it:
“Go and borrow some batteries from another publishing house!”
She flatly refused. Such a thing could not be done. So, two literary critics who were there to speak at the book launch, my editor and myself stood at the stand in front of the small crowd.
“Do you want to continue? Or should we cancel and do this another time?” my editor whispered, embarrassed by what was happening but powerless. I had a choice between screaming at the audience to make myself heard, or taking the chance that the event might never happen at all. I chose the second. Of course, the publishing house forgot all about it or… I’ll stop here and not speculate more on their reasons. The book apparently sold though I have no idea how many copies. I’ve seen recently that there is a second edition. I was unaware of it. As for being paid… the last time I contacted them through a lawyer friend, I received $100.
I published the second book five years ago. A story in verse for children, that I also illustrated (with great trepidation I might add). This time I chose a different publishing house, specialized in materials for young audiences. They told me that they will support me in whatever marketing endeavors I might have, but that the initiative would have to come from me. They didn’t have the budged (or the desire) to engage in such behavior. A year later I contacted them for some sales reports. I had not heard from them at all. The email came: “Lady, the book is not selling! We will give the stock back to the printer to be chopped up…” or something to that effect. This spring I saw it on the book shelf of one of the most popular book stores in the country. Odd… if it’s not selling.
Thus, my first forays into the world of traditional publishing left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Enter Amazon and CreateSpace! It’s free to publish your book with them… you just have to learn a whole lot about formatting. Then, there are a zillion other small things (the subject of future posts) such as cover design, tables of contents, mastering InDesign and writing a good author description. But I took the leap and published my first book this way, a story in verse again, for children: “The Bear’s Slippers“. I did not promote it at all – I cannot call mass-emailing friends “promotion”. I just uploaded it and left it there. It sold about 12 copies in a year. One of those went to my then-boyfriend, current husband. Two more found a home with my best friend. Sigh…
In the beginning of this month I self-published yet another book: “The Golden Cheese“. Another story in verse for kids between 3 and 7. The illustrations are much better and I am quite proud of it. I am also bent on promoting it. I don’t know much about the process though. It feels like stepping into the dark night with nothing to light up the path except a small dim light called “a hunch” that comes in the moment after asking the question “What should I do next?”.
I’ll keep a journal of my saga.
And write on…
