Review: Write. Publish. Repeat. (Platt/Truant/Wright)
Imagine yourself walking into a casino. There’s blackjack tables on the left, craps tables on the right.
Blackjack is feeling lucky to you. Yes, it’s more of a risk, but it’s familiar and easy enough in theory. You feel you understand it best, and so it feels safe. You take your seat, settle yourself in for the ride. Each new hand holds the promise of a brand new day. You win some hands, lose some–more than you’re winning, actually, but hey–you’re still in the game, right?
Over at the craps tables it sounds like everyone’s having a grand time. The drinks are flowing, and the everyone at the table is cheering, even the dealer. The rules, as far as you can tell, are as up in the air as the dice, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
This is what the traditional publishing versus self-publishing landscape sounds like these days, where traditional publishing is the serious sleight-of-hand business of the blackjack table and self-publishing is the craps table where all the fun people are gathering. Neither is a non-viable option by any means–it just seems like the odds are better at the craps table, where the players can distribute their assets among a number of side bets, and only those apparently in the know have any idea what the rules are, and what’s going on at any given moment.
This book is Craps For Dummies. It entirely demystifies the ever-shifting self-publishing landscape. The platforms and distribution methods may change at any given moment–but the core tenets more or less remain the same.
And here’s the real interesting bit, though: these very same tenets apply to traditional publishing as well. The only real difference is the author is taking the entire process upon themselves, rather than going through traditional methods. Otherwise, the process is exactly the same. And this book takes you through that process.
This is my new bible–for self-publishing, and otherwise. Some of it, granted, I was already doing, either through my own process or instinctively as a fumbled about the marketing aspects of my business. But it was nice to have those things I felt I knew solidified for me in black in white. And the rest of it, well…pure gold.
It’s wonderful to know I don’t have to worry about genre-hopping anyomore. (Thank the gods–I need to get these warring voices OUT OF MY HEAD. And establishing a new author “brand” for a one-off historical? Oh, hell no.) Funnels? So logical and yet how many authors think of their work in those terms–even though publishers do? I LOVE the idea of funnels.
Interesting note, quality-wise (I have the paperback, so I can mark the ever-loving oblivion out of it): the book is, of course, self-published. (For it not to be would be as ironic and unfunny as the “Mind Of A Ninja, Body Of A Manatee” t-shirt Johnny B. occasionally wears on their weekly podcast. Really, Johnny B? Someone who weights sixty pounds sopping wet and talks about going to the gym makes one suspect you ganked such a shirt from Dave “I Stole Burt Reynolds’ Laugh Wright’s closet.)
Anyway, the book is of excellent quality and utterly indiscernible from any book you walk into a Barnes and Noble to purchase off the shelf. Matte cover, cream paper, professional typeset (some of the latter now as pink as the gun smoke in Unicorn Western. That’s right–the guys write and sell plenty of fiction, too, so they know what they’re talking about).
The fact of the matter is, an author’s portfolio of works is just that–a portfolio much like any other financial portfolio–but how many of us think of our works as assets to be leveraged and diversified? Aren’t they worth all the hard work and time we’ve invested in them?
Most of y’all are well aware I’m juggling a seriously extended queue and production schedule (DAMN YOU, VOICES–DAMN YOU TO HELL! *pant pant*), but now I have more than a production schedule–I have a business plan, and the process to see it through. At last count, I have 8-9 distinctive funnels planned, and not including what I’ve already published, something like (at last count) 40 books of various lengths planned–not including standalones–in my current queue. Write. Publish. Repeat. was exactly the book I needed to make this happen.
It’s a big book–in the neighborhood of 460 pages–but it reads fast. I bolted through it in a matter of days, when I should have been writing. Then I got sucked into the backlist of their weekly podcasts, also when I should have been writing. (Jerks.) But I’m so glad I did, and I can’t wait to implement all that I’ve learned. I think you will, too.
(Write. Publish. Repeat. at Amazon)
