My thoughts on Self Publishing

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  If you are an author, whether starting out or a seasoned veteran, you hear it all the time; it is really tough for new authors to get into the publishing industry.  That’s a fact.  A new author gets rejections upon rejections from not only Book Publishers, but also from Literary Agents.  And once you get an Agent or into a Publishing house, if your first book bombs with miniscule sales, good luck getting another contract with a publisher after that.  The once huge marketing machine that is the Book Publishing Industry now only flexes their marketing muscle on brand name authors and can barely scrape together a campaign for new authors.  There are exceptions to every rule, and this is not the way it happens all the time, but for the majority this is all true.

  Recently I listened to C.C. Chapman‘s interview with Chris Anderson on the Managing the Gray podcast.  Chris is the Editor of Wired Magazine, published his first book “Long Tail” and just released his newest book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price“.  You can not only get it in Hardcover at Amazon and Barnes and Nobel but you can download the digital versions for free.  This interview got me thinking about the Self Published Author.  We see many success stories of Self Publishing from different sources.  In the interview C.C. mentions my friends J.C. Hutchins and Scott Sigler who received book publishing deals from self publishing their free audiobooks online.  Wil Wheaton is also a self publishing success story with his recent book “Sunken Treasure” which you can buy through LuLu in digital or print format.

  But is Self Publishing a better way to get started as a first time author?

  Short answer, Yes absolutely!

  Now for the long answer….

  There are many misconceptions of Self Publishing in a digital marketplace, especially for new authors.  I’m going to break down my thoughts on Self Publishing below and hopefully this can help you understand it a bit better and why it may be a better option for those wannabe authors out there, such as myself.

  1) The Rejection Slip.

  I hear this all the time, “You can’t call yourself an author until you get a lot of rejection letters”.  Why?  Why do you have to be rejected from publishers and agents multiple times to call yourself an author?  This doesn’t make sense!  I have friends who have received their share of rejection letters, and from what I can tell they don’t give you a lot of feedback, they don’t tell you how to improve, all they say is “Sorry, your book that you worked long hours for won’t fit with us here”.  I’m paraphrasing but you get the idea.  I find this system ridiculous.  I’m not saying this because I’m afraid of rejection, I’m not.  But how am I supposed to improve as an author, and having being forced to suffer for my art when I receive Rejection notices in the mail?  I realize I may be coming off as a whiner with this, but I may have found a much better solution, and that’s Self Publishing.

  I Self Published my first book Black Shadow as a free audiobook that in all intents and purposes wasn’t a great book, but it wasn’t a bad one either.  I’m willing to admit that.  I didn’t go through the ridiculousness of sending it out to agents and publishers to get rejected before I went with Self Publishing, I wrote the book with the intention of publishing it on my own.  I gave it my own spin in combining an audio drama format with a vocal narrative and it worked.  I received many comments saying that people loved the voices, the effects, the music, and it drew them into the story.  With the help of friends I started to gain an audience for not only just Black Shadow but my work in general, and to me it was a personal success.  Along the way though, I received negative feedback about the story saying it was too cliched, and I had complete rip-offs of other characters/stories(you will rarely get this kind of feedback from a rejection slip).  Honestly I put those in there as nods to my favorite geek icons, but I can see their point.  So as I received those comments I learned from that, and take that in mind when I am writing.

  This form of feedback is much better than receiving rejection slips in the mail.  By Self Publishing I received direct feedback from my audience which allows me to grow as an author.  The business of rejection slips in the mail doesn’t allow the author to grow, it just forces the author to either put those stories in a drawer never to be seen again, or forces them to work harder to get into the industry.  This can be a good thing but for the most part you are mindlessly walking around in the dark trying to find that one speck of light that is your shot at publishing your work.  So why not take that story you are writing, put it out there and let the audience give you direct feedback on what you can do to improve.

  2) Free vs. Pay

  The stigma that is on the Net right now is the Free concept.  Everything has to be for free.  Free Free Free!  See how silly that sounds?  Now let me ask you, how is an author supposed to potentially make a living out of Self Publishing when they have to release stuff for free?  Some say “Give it all away” “It promotes the openness of the web” Bullcrap.  Free isn’t a business model, it’s a distribution method.  There are ways to give something away and still have a pay version.  Think about the example of software.  Developers release a demo version of their software so people can try the program to see if it’s right for them, and if the user likes it, he/she can purchase the full or unlocked version from the developer.  Also think about iTunes.  The program itself is released for free, you can catalog your music, use your iPod with it, and so on, but to get the full benefits of iTunes you can purchase content to be downloaded to your computer and put on your iPod or iPhone.  Plus this drives sales for the iPod/iPhone for Apple.  All this from releasing a program for free, and you can’t tell me Apple isn’t profitable.  I call this model the Free-mium model.  You can have stuff for free, but make sure you figure out a way so that you can make money off of your hard work.  Whether it’s through donations, or releasing the first few chapters for free, there are many different methods to choose from.  Find one that best suits you and your audience.

  I do have other thoughts about Self Publishing that I would like to go more in depth with in this post, such as piracy, no editing in self published works, but I need to sit down and gather my thoughts about it before I can talk more.

  So as a call to action on this post, I want to know your thoughts on Self Publishing on the web?  Is this something, that with the right ideas, can allow authors to grow and flourish in this digital marketplace?  Or am I just completely full of it.  LOL

  Let me know in the comments.

  As always I remain obediently yours.

  Steve
  

  
  
  July 14th, 2009 | Steve Saylor | 2 Comments |

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