Self-Pub, Conferences, and the Limiting Factor of Being YOU

You can’t walk into a room full of writers lately without hearing about how well some author has done with self publishing. And this weekend, a lot of people were walking into a rooms full of authors at Romance Times Booklover’s Convention, and I’m sure having that exact conversation.

Self-publishing gives you more control! More flexibility! More royalties! All without pesky publishers telling you what to do!

Current wisdom holds that self-pub is the easiest road to riches, just so long as you put in the teensiest bit of elbow grease.

Well, let me tell you a story…

When my husband and I bought our first house, it was 2000. Seattle home prices were doubling every few years it seemed, and tons of low income residents were being forced out by predatory lending practices…leaving a goldmine for young, motivated couples like my husband and myself.

Or, so it seemed on paper.

When my husband and I looked for homes to buy, I wanted to buy a cheap ass fixer upper with good bones–way in the questionable zone where a few years earlier you could get stabbed. Why not?! In a couple years, we’d have a lovely home in a desirable zip code and we’d be RICH! Rich, I tell you! I was sure of it!

That’s when my real estate agent, who I will always love to pieces, asked, “Okay, but do you actually know how to remodel a home?”

“Errrr… No.” How hard could it be, right?

“And does your husband want to spend six months on a remodeling project?”

“Umm… Well, he travels a lot.”

“So, you’re going to have to pay someone else to remodel?”

Yeah. And that’s where my argument fell apart. I had neither the skill, the support, nor the time to do the work necessary to buy a fixer-upper. As it turned out, my husband had zero interest in living somewhere quite so “transitional,” and we ended up in a tiny-but-cute house on a block with a condemned building but where the residents who had jobs and were in no danger of being foreclosed on.

In other words, we made a smart investment. And it may have taken many, many years, but by the time we moved into a larger house 12 years later, it paid off.

What does this have to do with self-publishing, you may ask?

Just this: It doesn’t matter if “someone” can make tons of money at something. It matters if YOU can make tons of money at it. Because if all of us had the same skills, same circumstances and wanted to get rich fast, we’d all becomes investment bankers.

The fact is, not everyone has the skill set necessary to be good at self-publishing. My guess is that the authors who do the best without pubs are those who have at least one or two of the following skills:

1. Can write like the wind, turning out a book every month, or every two months at the most.

2. Has good aesthetic abilities. In other words, they can tell when a cover is good or mediocre and when formatting looks pleasing to the eye.

3. Enjoys talking to and interacting with people like cover artists, formatters, editors on a regular basis.

4. Feels comfortable drawing up their own contracts and enforcing said contracts.

5. Enjoys marketing and promotion.

6. Feels confident in their bookkeeping ability.

For people who’ve done well, they’re probably thinking, “Well, doesn’t everyone have these skills? And if they don’t have them, can’t they learn them?”

The answer is no. Not everyone has these skills. And not everyone can learn them, at least not without a ton of work and constantly retraining their personalities.

Me? I’m unorganized as anything, and I have basically no design ability. I rely on my publishers’ marketing department to tell me what’s good. Because I honestly don’t know. And for me to learn cover design and formatting would be like trying to learn how to put up drywall because I wanted to save money when buying a house. It’s not going to happen.

We’ve all had moments where people have said to us, “Can’t you just…?” then listed some absurd thing we’d never in a thousand years do.

“Can’t you just bike to work instead of driving?”

“Can’t you just lose weight?”

“Can’t you just wake up at five-thirty in the morning?”

“Can’t you just tell your in-laws this is not a great weekend for them to come visit?”

NO. For fuck’s sake, I can’t just do these things. If I could have, I would have long ago. Now, get off my back.

Each of us knows what we can handle. If we’re honest with ourselves, we have a sense of how much we can bite off and expect to be able to chew. That’s why self-publishing will not have the same effect for all people. The limiting factor is not self-pub itself, it’s YOU. It’s ME.

I can only do what I can do. You can only do what you can do. And people who write about marketing and success always seem to forget that life is not one-size fits all.

The reason I bring this up in context of conferences, is that it’s the same thing with GayRomLit, RT Booklover’s Convention, RWA, etc. There’s tremendous social and professional pressure to attend these events, with the belief that doing so will for sure help your career.

Now, I have enjoyed the conferences I’ve been to. And I’m actually fairly social, so I think conferences are a good way for me to promote my work. But for God’s sake, conferences do not make sense for everyone!

If you have little kids and have to pay for a sitter, if you have social anxiety and hate being around people, if you can’t afford the outlay of money——For God’s sake, don’t go to a conference. Attendance is not a magic elixir, and your milage may vary. I’ve met great people at cons and forged a lot of professional connections. But honestly, at this stage I may soon start going only to conferences and events on the West Coast. Or at the very least Denver and west of there.

Why? Because the limiting factor is me. Social as I may be, I can only talk to so many people over the course of two or three days. So whether the event is 200 people or two thousand, I’m still only going to talk to 40 or 50 people. Any more than that is untenable, at least until I’m a bigger name author. It’s about knowing my limits and knowing what I can do.

What else can I do? Well, I’m a good reader. I’ve worked a lot on my public speaking abilities in the last couple years, and I’ve found I sell more books when I have an opportunity to read my work at an event. So, there’s that.

I can cook, so I go to events where I can bring food. I’m energetic, so I do events where I can be on my feet. I’m more comfortable talking to men than women, so I plan to promote at Pride Parades and gay events.

These are my skills, so I use them. As for skills I don’t have and have no interest in developing? Fuck it. There’s no use wishing I was someone other than who I am.

As Judd Nelson said in The Breakfast Club, everyone can do something. The trick in life if figuring out what *you* can do, and using it your best advantage.

No career path is One Size Fits All. Find your own way, and don’t worry about everyone else.

Cheers and happy writing,

Daisy

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