Oooh, spiffy! I am slowly learning my way around WordPress and making this blog more my own.
So I feel more upbeat today. And you know why? Because of reddit.com. If you haven’t looked at it, you should. Some of it’s terrifying, but some of it’s pretty awesome.
I entered a query in the ask section, explaining that I felt down and untalented and sad about being deeply in debt and unable to make good enough money to pay it off and being unpublished because I am afraid of failing. Strangers on the internet told me to take things one step at a time, not to give up, one said they believed in me. How amazing to hear those things when you are down!
I also realized that I hadn’t written anything on my novel in several days. That’s a recipe for despair. I am a writer. A writer must write what she has to say, not speak it. Hemmingway. Blogging doesn’t fill the void. Working on my lastest novel does.
The other reason I am more upbeat is because of self-publishing.
I know, I whined about that being a problem in my last post. I think I have changed my mind.
Apparently, self-publishing for eBook formats is becoming quite the going concern. On my internet quest for answers and help feeling better, I stumbled across a book titled Be the Monkey. (Look, I’m linking things! Whoo-hoo!)
This book is by two authors who had book deals, tidy book deals, and heard something about self-publishing for eBooks on the grapevine. Each of them tried it, and ba-boom. They are both self-publishing advocates now, doing all their recent titles exclusively on their own. Both of them predict this will be the way of the future, now that eBooks are outselling paper books.
Their arguments are compelling. Their books are well-written and look nice. Both of them are talking about making better money as eBook writers than with any of their New York deals. Further research pointed me towards even more authors taking this step — and many simply jumping right on the eBook bandwagon right out of the gate. And selling. Selling well.
Can I create an eBook? Not just yet. More research must be done, and then In the Dark must be re-edited.
Can I sell well in eBook format? I do not know. The marketing end of this thing seems murkey at the moment. The authors of Be the Monkey advocate lots of marketing, while the author of The Indie Journey , another eBook I picked up, notes that his marketing efforts never seemed to amount to much. But that he’s still selling well. More titles seem to indicate better success, since if you have a lot of titles, a lot of things pop up when someone finds one of your books. I have one book that just needs a spit polish, with a sequel 3/4 done. And the first book in a new series half-done.
Truth to tell, I have been worrying about dealing with a real book deal. The time promoting a book on my own, what happens if the book gets dropped, what if the first book doesn’t do very well for whatever reason and gets pulled and no one ever offers me a deal again, what if I can’t quit my day job and just write, the list goes on. The second author I picked up says that his book got picked up, a huge advance was offered, and then the publisher got bought by a company that had refused his book earlier. The entire staff working on his book were fired, and the new company pretty much brushed his book under the rug. This is standard practice in New York. I was aware of this long ago. It worried me. But when I don’t write, I get depressed. So I wrote, and hoped that kind of story wouldn’t be mine.
An eBook would mean that story wouldn’t be mine. At the same time, I self-published once already and found it disappointing. However, that was in print. How would things be different for an eBook?
1) The eBook would be offered on Amazon.com and the B&N automatically. No fighting to get into distribution. (A fight I lost with my paper book, BTW. Only two indie bricks-and-mortar stores would touch me, and the B&N my sister worked at. Not the B&N in my hometown.)
2) I would not have to pre-purchase copies to hand-sell. No up-front money, no “I don’t have any books right now to sell you because I’m broke” when people ask.
3) Marketing my work from home would be my best bet, meaning no taking off work to attend cons, no paying gas and hotel fee to do a reading, no explaining to bookstores that I am self-published and would they like me to read anyway and getting “No thanks.”
4) The eBook would sit on the electronic shelf forever. Meaning that whenever people notice it, it will still be there. I no longer have any paper copies of my book, nor do I know how anyone could get a copy. My contract is long expired.
Down sides?
1) I will have to direct people to go to the internet when they ask, a thing I avoided with my paper book. However, I can direct them to a well-known site which is easy to use, not an off-the-road site that’s slightly complicated, and if they have a Kindle, Nook or iPhone handy, I can show them immediately and they can dowload it instantly.
2) Nothing to sign. The technology exists, but isn’t in wide circulation.
3) A person has to have an e-reader of some kind to read me. Gramma and Grampa are out.
4) Unless I want to pay professionals to do things for me (NO!), I will have to become a lot more tech savvy than I am at the mo. Aaaargh! I fear the information super highway!
Still a lot of research to be done, but hey, I’m getting kind of excited. I just had Eric upload my old copy of In the Dark to my new computer so I can edit it. I never thought I’d be back messing with that story again. I sort of miss Ian and Sebastian. It’ll be fun to revisit them and maybe get a chance to see what they’ve been up to.
