Recently I sold my GH winning manuscript to Entangled Publishing. (Yay me!) As a colleague of mine pointed out, though Harlequin had passed on the story, it had come thisclose to selling. Thus, it was a shame for the manuscript to sit under my bed when it could be read by others. For some time - since RWA National - I'd been kicking around the idea of self-publishing the story, but decided against it. In fact, after much thought, I have realized self-publishing isn't for me.
Let me say straight out - I have nothing against self-publishing. Those people who decide to enter the fray, I wish nothing but luck and good fortune. The following are my reasons and my reasons alone for opting against "doing it myself."
1. I'm not all that good without an editor. Seriously, I need someone to read my work and give me a broad stroke picture of where I went wrong. The books I've published are good because I had a second set of eyes - professional eyes- guiding me. I am not confident enough in my skills - or rather I'm comfortable enough in my lack of skills - to through my work out there without guidance. Now I know, I could invest in a good editor. Leading me to point number 2.
2. I'm cheap. Good self publishing requires that you make an investment. You must invest in a good cover, in good editorial support, in good marketing. The level of professionalism and quality you bring to the market is directly proportional to the amount of money - and time - you are willing to invest. And so we come to point number 3....
3. I loathe promotional work. I would rather have my fingernails pulled out than self-promote. One of the reasons I love writing for Harlequin is because, while they encourage self-promotion, they are quite up front about the fact that the best marketing strategy is to write more quality books. Writing books I can handle. Promoting them....not as much fun.
4. I'm inherently lazy. The women I know who are successful with self-publishing - people like inimitable Marie Force, for example - are powerhouses. They manage to write prolifically while amassing huge followings and spend quality time marketing. It takes a special person to be able to do all that, and frankly, I don't have that much energy. I have enough trouble accomplishing what's on my plate now. To think of the work that is required to market one's self - the advertising, the reviews, the blog tours, not to mention the savvy it takes to do those things correctly....well, I'm tired just thinking of it.
So for all of you brave enough to enter the world of self-publishing - good for you. I wish you luck. I hope you're all the next Amanda Hockings. Meanwhile, I'll be here, on the sidelines, rooting for you and sticking with the traditional press.
Keep writing!
10 comments:
Marketing isn't that hard, actually. Aren't you doing it right now? :p
In all seriousness, though, promotion isn't all about money. That's what the self-publishing companies would like you to believe, of course, so they can ask for hundreds of dollars to run your manuscript through spell-check and slap your title on a stock photo...but the most effective "campaigns" aren't campaigns at all. They're making your work available for people and having the patience to let your popularity grow organically. People don't buy books because they see ads on websites...they buy books because their friends rave about them.
I'm not one to talk, of course, because I have yet to sell a single copy of my novel after self-publishing it on the Kindle and Nook, but no one's an overnight success. Sometimes I do wish I had a big company to do the work for me and hand me a comfy advance, but when you get down to it I'm greedy. I can't settle for 10% royalties if I can get 70% directly. To each his own, but I'm happy out here in the Wild Wild West.
Barb, I hear you. The people I know who have successfully self-pubbed have put a lot of time and energy into making sure they have the right cover art, several steps of editing, formatting for kindle and smashwords, and a pricing strategy - and that's all before the book hits cyber shelves. Then, based on results, they tweak pricing, develop a marketing strategy for building their following and getting on lists, and using the "People who bought this also bought xxx" as their recommendation shelf.
It's a big undertaking, and when you are also trying to deliver new material consistently, you have to weight the outlay of time and money to do it properly against the time you could be writing.
*IF* I had a backlist book I thought was of a high enough quality to put out there, I'd consider it. But right now, that would mean writing something brand new and it doesn't fit into my career strategy right now. Doesn't mean it won't down the road, but for right now, I like where I am.
I'm lazy and cheap too, and self publishing isn't working out all that great for me. But at the same time, neither was trad publishing. What do you think you might do if you hadn't been able to break into trad publishing?
Great post, Barb.
Donna, that about sums it up for me, too. It's not a part of the ultimate plan at this point.
Plus...
I had some really insightful revisions for my last book (I always have revisions, what else is new?) and I realized, really starkly that I STILL don't find the REAL book without good editorial feedback from an editor I trust. I did the revisions and I was SO MUCH HAPPIER with the book, and I knew I couldn't have done it on my own. I want every book to be the best it can be, to hit the mark to the best of my ability, and I need an editor for that!
I am self-publishing, and in my opinion there's an awful lot of hype out there about what authors ought to do and how much effort and insanity they should put into self-promoting. Personally, I'm going for the same self-promotion route you are: writing more and better books. I've mentioned my book on Facebook and Twitter, of course, but only on its free days, which isn't exactly a way to get rich. :) And I haven't made any effort to get followers.
For me, self-publishing was definitely not a choice about effort vs not effort: I'm not working any harder as a self-publisher than I would be as a traditional published author and might, in fact, be doing less. But my goals are for the long-term, not the short. I'm not sure what defines a successful self-published author--money and sales?--but for me, self-publishing was about the freedom to do my own thing, not have to fit into a real genre, write the story the length it wanted to be instead of what it needed to be for the printing press. I worked in publishing for a lot of years: it's nice to not have to care about where a book is shelved for sales purposes or whether it's the "right" length. Of course, I'm also not expecting to give up my day job anytime soon. (Rhetorically: I'm actually an unemployed grad student at the moment. But I'm not planning to give up school!)
I think the thing that frustrates me the most about self-publishing vs traditional publishing conversations, though, is that it always seems to come down to money. I have no idea whether I'll make any money as a self-publisher (although I've actually done a lot better than I expected in the first month) but I'm really in it for the chance to share a story that I love, that I think is probably too quirky and different for the mainstream. If traditional publishing is working for you and it's a place where you can get stories that you love out into the wider world, then yay. And good for you!
Ahh self publishing I'm very much on the fence about it all.
To be truthful I'm just too lazy to do it. Plus I'm still a bit of a traditionalist and will give it my best to get pubbed the traditional way.
I think a lot of success has come from being established with a following and a backlist. I have neither.
I'm not dissing those self-publishing, good on the ones that do it and are successful, but it's not for me and I'm not sure if it ever will be. I think I still need to learn a lot to improve my writing.
This is my perception only, let me repeat, this is MY perception only. And I'm not saying it's right or wrong.
All those now self publishing should not be dissing traditional authors if they decide not to go down that road. As in everything in life, it's a choice and you can chose to do it or not.
Wow! Just the mere mention of the term self-publishing sets off comments. Thanks for turning out TK and Wyndes - pls keep in mind that I'm not against self-publishing at all. I'm merely not interested in it as a venue for myself. For someone else, it may be the best path to take. It's all a subjective personal call.
Jody - you raised an interesting question: would I feel the same way if I didn't have luck with traditional press. I thought about it and yes, I believe I would. See, I was around when POD first became viable (back when ebooks were on disks LOL) and saw the fall out from that rush of excitement. In fact, I experienced the fallout first hand. It led me to make the very conscious decision to focus on selling to a Big Six publisher.
Perhaps if I didn't have that experience, I'd think differently, but for now, that's where my mind is at.
And again - for those that pursue self-publishing...congratulations. It takes guts (and very big brass balls) to break out on your own without a net.
Barb,
Thanks for the kind words. That's really nice of you to say. Congrats on your deal with Entangled. I'm hearing great things about them, and I'm so happy you found a home for your GH manuscript. I know how much you love it and have wanted to get it out to readers.
To me the self-pub debate comes down to comfort zone. Everyone has a different comfort zone, different skills, different thresholds of what works and doesn't work for them. Running a business takes a lot of time and effort in addition to writing, so it is not for everyone. It's worked out great for me, but I'm not ruling out anything in the future. I can't wait to see what happens next.
Thanks Marie. You summed up my feelings in a nutshell. I'm not comfortable self publishing right now. Others are. Some - like you - are awesome at it. The true gift of our changing marketplace is that we have the power to make the decision for ourselves.
I've commented before, at least once or twice. I know I told someone that her new year's blog resolution sounded boring. :)
And self-publishing the lazy way (that is, my way) is actually not difficult or even all that scary. The best part is people tell me things and I get to completely ignore them because there's nothing at stake. I wrote a story, I liked it, the way to share it with a larger audience is to make it available for sale, so I posted it to Amazon. Done.
I got told such funny things along the way. Like, "You can't use dialog in a blurb, it's bad." To which my thought was, "Okay, maybe you can't, but what's stopping me?" Or--and I loved this one--"never use parentheses in fiction"--um, I'm going to use parentheses whenever I feel like it. I like them, I think they're handy. I also occasionally use um and hmm and huh. I also use adverbs and the verb "was." And I'm very bad about my commas. But so what? There's no publishing house's print budget at stake, no one's job or reputation on the line, my book's not even taking up bookstore space that could be used by some other worthier book.
I guess I'm trying to do self-publishing the mellow way. We'll see how it works. I admit, every time I go to Amazon and find out that I have a new review, my heart races a little--someday soon one of those reviews will be negative and we'll see how mellow I can feel then, lol. But meanwhile, it's been a fun experience, I've liked every bit of it, and it really hasn't been scary.
(Okay, I did mention that I was in publishing for a long time, right? The decade spent as an acquisition editor probably made me much more cavalier about the significance of any single book. Books come, books go, including mine. My mom spent her leisure time knitting baby blankets and giving them away to anyone she could find who was having a baby; I spend mine making up stories and mostly giving them away to strangers.)
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