I wanted to start this blog off by telling you why I’m here.
I’m not going to advertise this blog, so if you’ve somehow stumbled across it, welcome!
I’m personally sick of all the marketing that all authors are supposed to be doing all the time in order to be successful.
When I had my first three books published, I marketed the crap out of them. I used the resources I had available to me and worked really, really hard.
I was certainly “successful” for a first-time author. I did comparatively well (especially compared to most first-time authors published by New York publishers). But I’ve often wondered what impact my marketing had on the books. Did it really matter whether or not I went to a book signing in Palmyra, New York? Did it matter that I had an ongoing, daily blog with other authors in my same niche market? Did I need to fly to a different state several times (on my own dime) to attend conferences and booksellers conventions? To travel to individual stores passing out cookies, leaving pens and signing books?
I spent a lot (A LOT) of time and money. Fortunately my husband has a good job and while it was very difficult for us, we did manage to swing it (barely).
Don’t get the wrong idea – my publisher was amazing when it came to marketing. They certainly had a lock on their audience, and my book was in catalogs and featured in their bookstores right as people walked in (and there is nothing quite like walking into a bookstore and seeing your book on the front tables!) My editor is the best editor in the world; the managing editor is someone that I admire and adore. It was a positive experience.
But because I wrote in a niche market, there were very certain lines that I couldn’t cross; books that they wouldn’t publish because they wouldn’t sell well to their audience. On the flip side, I write romance. But I don’t put sex in my books. Which immediately precludes me from a lot of lines. I also don’t write Christian romance. I write just sweet, clean reads. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of room for those.
Like every other author, I certainly wanted to be published by New York publishers. I listened to all the horror stories. Of friends who lost their editors and their books were cancelled. Of houses closing or restructuring. Of lines folding. A friend who launched a new line with a 100,000 first run print, only to sell a fraction of those and being forced to change her name. I knew and understood all the risks. But it was the only way to get my books to a larger audience.
I listened to Bob Mayer when he came and spoke to us in Ohio. This was a man who had spent decades in the publishing trenches. Who struck me as a professional who knew exactly what he was talking about. And what he taught us? That unless we had a huge, bestselling idea/book, to forget about it. The midlist was disappearing. We needed to go big or go home.
I didn’t have a blockbuster idea.
I had several smaller books that appealed to me.
All the evidence pointed to the fact that I had nothing to offer the marketplace. My style of books was no longer selling very well with my publisher. I had two small children born who were extremely time consuming. I didn’t have a bestseller to give to New York.
I felt stuck. The Muse had left the building.
I started to force myself to write. Even if I wouldn’t have what I dreamed of, I would still give it my best shot. But at my core, I felt discouraged.
I thought maybe I should just give up.
But then an authors’ email group I belong to had an interesting post. It was from someone I didn’t know very well, but he talked about self-publishing.
Like everyone else, I saw self-publishing (or vanity publishing) as the lowest of the low. Only the most pathetic and untalented people would ever do something like that. But the post piqued my interest.
It had a link to a blog by J.A. Konrath. Back in my publishing days, I followed Konrath somewhat religiously. I didn’t know anyone else who had grabbed marketing by the horns the way he had. If someone could force their book into becoming a bestseller, he was that guy. He went to thousands of signings and readings and drove all over the country to sign his books. He would hand sell his books at the bookstores he stopped at. He knew more about book marketing than anyone else I’d read.
As my writing waned, so did my interest in the publishing community. Including reading what Konrath had to say about it.
So as I came back to his blog, “A Newbie’s Guide toPublishing,” I saw that Konrath had changed. He had forsaken New York, and had been publishing his new works himself on Amazon.
I went back to his blogs from 2009 to see why he had changed his mind. He’d been as against self-publishing as I was.
As I started to read his posts, my perspective started to shift. I saw the possibilities he presented. I would have complete control over my work. I could use whatever title I wanted. Pick out whatever cover I wanted. I could release a book whenever I wanted.
But the best part? I no longer had to share royalties with anyone else. I could hire freelancers to edit my book and design covers. And I could make four times as much money on each book as I had traditionally publishing, but at a fraction of the cover price.
I remember walking around in a daze. How could this be? Could this be real? In addition to all the control, Konrath was making obscene amounts of money. And he wasn’t the only one.
For weeks, it was all I wanted to talk about (my family must have gotten so tired of me). It was thrilling and captivating and had changed my worldview. I saw what was coming. How an industry would implode, and a new one would rise up to take its place. I wanted to be part of it.
I continued to read the leaders of the revolution – Konrath, Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I found Kindle Boards and met the authors there, including Victorine E. Lieske, who had sold 100,000 copies of her self-published e-book and landed on the New York Times bestsellers list.
The world had expanded and the possibilities seemed endless.
I wouldn’t have to spend years trying to get an agent’s attention. I wouldn’t have to scrub and polish a query letter to perfection. I would never again have to write another synopsis. I could just write…and I could just write whatever I wanted. There were no market expectations or a genre being “over” or “tired.”
I tried to share my excitement. I had fellow traditionally published authors basically mock me and tell me how ridiculous I was/this whole thing was. I had one who said that successful self-published authors were just anomalies, the same way that Patterson, Rowling and Meyers were anomalies in traditional publishing.
The problem was that as time went on, more and more people were making a lot of money. I saw their posts and their screenshots of their Amazon accounts. People were making one thousand, two thousand dollars a month. Which is two to four times what they would have made as an advance had they been traditionally published (not including the 15% their agent would have taken). There were authors who, for the first time in their careers, were making an actual living writing. And it wasn’t one or two people. It was dozens. And then hundreds. For all I know, there could now be thousands of authors making enough money to support their families. Authors who, under the old system, had to keep their day jobs.
One of the things that had always bothered me about the traditional system is what Rusch and Smith call the “produce” mentality of publishing. That your book basically has a month or so to make a huge impression, and if you don’t breakout, you fail. You books have to be pulled from the shelves to make way for the next hot new thing. Your books get returned to the publisher and your royalties take a hit.
But digital publishing was forever. The digital shelf space was infinite and would last as long as we had computers. That thrilled me too. A book might gain traction years after you’d written it.
I bought a Kindle from Amazon and found that despite what was predicted by some critics, I was now reading more books than I ever had before (and I’m a pretty voracious reader. Like a book a night). If I found something I liked? It was instantly mine. I only had to click a single button and it was on my e-reader. I didn’t have to go to the store or stand in line or wait for an order to be shipped to me. I could read it immediately. I loved the convenience. I loved Amazon’s recommendations for books that I might like. I found the entire experience to be easy and enjoyable.
This was the future. I could see it. I didn’t know why everyone couldn’t see it. (Even now there are many aspiring authors and traditional authors who get openly hostile if you dare bring up self-publishing.) Your New York publisher would expect you to self promote and the success of your work would rest primarily on your shoulders. So if that was the case, why not keep all the money for myself? If I had to do all the work, like the little red hen, why should the dog and cat get part of it?
I also started to realize how little self marketing worked. I got endless spam from other authors about their works on Twitter and Facebook. (I also don’t much like Twitter or Facebook not only because of the spam aspects, but because I found it too much to follow. I didn’t like spending hours on it trying to keep up with all the posts.) If people knew what worked when it came to marketing, we’d all be doing it and we’d all be rich. But the general feeling seems to be that we have to do something. So authors spend hours dissecting what might possibly work to help them get their names out there.
I started thinking that Smith and Konrath were right – that the best publicity for your book was releasing a new one. The more digital shelf space your books occupied, the better chance you had of being discovered by a new reader.
So this blog is an account of my independent publishing adventures. I don’t intend for it to be for readers, because my guess is most readers don’t care, but for those who are interested in the independent publishing phenomenon. I want to see if I can be successful (while recognizing that my definition of success may vary from others).
To tell you about me – I have three books already published. I have no email list or anything from that time period that would help me, (not only that, but while moving across country cybersquatters snapped up my author domain name), so I feel like I’m starting off from the same jumping off point as every other indie author.
I have no backlist to exploit. I don’t have any manuscripts sitting in drawers – everything I’ve written I’ve sold.
So I’m starting out at zero. I just finished a YA book which is in the process of being edited and I’m trying to find a cover artist. I hope to have it done by the end of the month.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
