Mail Bag #7: Your Questions Answered

I have amazing fans.  Of course, if you’re reading this, you know you’re amazing.  Or you should.  Not because you’re (presumably) okay with this book thing but because you’re a stunning, unique creature of the universe.  It’s because I get to meet so many different people, with so many different life paths and stories, that I enjoy my Facebook page so much.  So, this morning, I asked if anyone had any questions about me, my process, or anything else that they’d like to see answered.  And here are their/your questions, along with their responses.

Is Amazon the best place to get your writing out there?  And, if so, do you need a Kindle?

As to the first part of this question, while it’s tough to pin down an exact figure, the majority of books sold in the world are sold through Amazon.  This is true for physical books as well as e-books, of which Amazon also has the lion’s share of the market.  So whether you’re traditionally published or self-published, there’s a strong argument to be made that you should sell your book on Amazon.  Now whether you should publish independently, with Amazon, is a different question altogether.

Last year, I wrote a book on self publishing.  The title, Self Publishing Is For Losers, is a tongue and cheek jab at the misconceptions many people still have about indie publishing–what it is and isn’t.  I, personally, chose the independent route.  Not because I had no other options but because I wanted to retain control over my own intellectual property.  It’s been hard, but, for me, it’s been worth it.  Especially as a new writer, just starting out; I didn’t want to see my work butchered, not to make it better (you can hire an independent editor for that) but to make it more “salable” according to some obscure calculus.  I wanted to prove that I was salable by selling books.  Which, of course, I have done.  And since I’ve become more popular, as an author, the same literary agencies and publishers who either needed to be convinced or who outright told me that my work was awful have all started calling again.

I’ve told them thank you very much, but no.

The best advice I have on how to succeed as an indie author is in SPIFL, which is free to download this coming Monday through Friday, but the broader concept of “best” remains an elusive one.  It depends on what you’re after.  The average writer, however they’re published, doesn’t make a living writing.  According to Forbes, the average self-published writer makes 5,000 per year and the average traditionally published writer makes 10,000.  Which is nothing to sneeze at but, in most parts of the country, also not enough to pay the bills.  However you publish, your reason for doing it has to be the same: that you love doing it.  You may, indeed, become the next J.K. Rowling.  But J.K. Rowling wasn’t J.K. Rowling for a long time.  And Stephen King, whom I’ve had the pleasure to know for some years, tells some horrifying–and hilarious–stories about what life was like for him before he sold his first book.

I think that, for those who do decide to self-publish, that, yes, Amazon is the best route.  Some of the most exciting and dynamic voices in publishing today publish through Amazon.  The best recipe for success, though, is always going to be having a good book.

As to the second part of the question, you need either a Kindle device or Amazon’s Kindle e-reader software, which is free to download for any of a multitude of electronic devices (either directly from the book in question’s Amazon page or your relevant app store), to read a Kindle title.  My husband, for example, reads books on is iPad.  To publish a Kindle title, you need the same thing you need to publish any book: a computer.

I write all of my manuscripts on a 15″ MacBook Pro.  My manuscripts are formatted, professionally, for both Kindle and paperback by 52 Novels.  They’re at the top of the industry.  Then I upload them to Amazon’s relevant portals (KDP and CreateSpace) using my same trusty computer.  The importance of professional formatting, where to find an editor, how to edit your own work and what exactly KDP is in the first place are all topics I cover in my book.  Which is why I’m offering it for free: because it’s not cool to answer people’s questions by asking them to pay you for more information!  But, at the same time, this is too big of a topic to cover effectively in a blog post.

Where does your inspiration come from?

The world around me.  They say, “write what you know,” but what exactly it means to do so can be tough to pin down.  The reason we connect with stories like The Fellowship of the Ring isn’t because we’ve all been to Mordor but because we’ve all, to some extent, experienced the struggles those characters face.  Just in a different place and time.  In other words, while scenery changes, emotions don’t.  My novels are fiction, of course, but there’s also a lot of me and my life story in them.  Particularly in The Price of Desire and The Prince’s Slave.  Nothing is a one to one comparison, in these types of situations, but in many ways the core story, particularly of The Price of Desire, is my own.  My husband, on whom Kisten is based, and I met eleven years ago this last Wednesday.

But in the broader sense, everything in the world is inspiration: from past experiences to other people to a particularly interesting roadside shrine.  At the end of the day, the biggest challenge for me is usually shutting my mind off!  Probably the strangest source of inspiration for me, though, was that behind The Black Prince Trilogy: a near death experience.  A few years ago, while I was pregnant with my son, I got really sick.  We made it to full term and he was delivered safely, but after that my health quickly deteriorated.  I’d chosen to delay certain treatments until after he was born, out of concern for his health.  So the short answer is that, after he was born, I continued to spend a lot of time in the hospital.  And a lot of time at home, too sick to move.

And it was during one of those times that the entire story for the entire trilogy just came to me.

When you write, do you outline?  Or just go where the story takes you?

I take notes, but I don’t outline.  I find that my characters evolve as I write and, often, take on a life of their own to the point where too much preplanning is limiting.  I always know how a story begins, and ends, when I start writing but often, apart from a very few, very general scenes sketched out in my head, that’s it.

What books have you written?

I’ve published fourteen books, only one of which is erotica (The Prince’s Slave).  The rest can best be described as entries into the gothic romance, fantasy, and horror genres.  All of my books have a heavy human component; they’re about who we are under the surface and what pushes us to do what we do–and become what we become.  You can buy my books (e-book and paperback) through Amazon, as well as at your local Barnes & Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Although all of my books are available through Barnes & Noble’s website, not every book is available in every store.  You can, however, special order any book you want through customer service.  And, of course, do the same at your local indie bookstore if you’d rather shop local.