If You’re Gonna Self-Publish

Writing, publishing, sometimes we don’t know how or can’t decide how to pull it all together. Go the traditional route or self-publish. These days, fortunately for indie writers who choose to go it alone most readers, I’d guess the majority, don’t really care how a book hits the shelves or Amazon or any other distributor.

So, if you’ve considered different methods of getting your work out there and have settled on self-publishing for right now, read on.

Despite the fact that most readers don’t care if a book is self-published, for a lot of reasons (including they don’t actually know it is) if the indie writer is smart he or she won’t allow what has become a big down side of the self-publishing world jump up from the newly purchased work and slap them in the face.

What’s that you say? You're asking what downside? Come on, if you’ve gotten Ebooks (and of course self-published print books) you’ve experience the total crap that can be out there.

Believe it or not, readers are truly turned off by books that look like crap. Books that have awful spelling, grammar, formatting, infantile covers, insanely long and convoluted sentences, links from table of contents to chapters that don’t work, etc. You know, unprofessional. It’s shoddy, it’s messy and it won’t keep or get you any more readers. The one reading will give up and new readers, if they read sloppy samples, will pass you by.

That’s the big plus of professional publishers. They do it all. I know, I know, not so easy to get them to publish your work even if you choose to go that route as opposed to indie. But take note. The books they produce look professional from cover through text. Well, at least most of the time. I’ve seen some doozies there as well (but my guess is the Editor was fired). Still, it’s worth emulating their methods.

Bottom line, you don’t want to look like an amateur.

Another bottom line, too many writers think they can simply crank it out, slap it up and sell a million.

Uh, no.

If you have any self-respect as a writer at all you should be going

for the polished, professional, outstandingly stunning look.  You want a reader to be unable to tell the indie published book from the traditionally published book – until or unless they look at the imprint name in the listing. So the goal is to make the book look very professional so your fantastic story won’t be tossed aside, the reader insisting any self-published book is junk. Not good for you; not good for other struggling Indies.

So, pay attention to your work. Check and double check. Have volunteer readers or an editor, or both, go through looking for all those little mistakes. And throw in a professional formatter versed in the various venues if you just can’t seem to get the hang of it yourself.

If you do that from the very first book, make sure it’s professionally done, your readers will know who to come to for a great story AND a professionally done manuscript. You know, one they can read without being jerked to a stop, pulled out of the flow of the reader’s trance, every few sentences by some glaring error that should never have been allowed to see digital or traditional print.

And let’s not forget the cover. It has to be professional as well. Remember that old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover”?  Well, really, people do. Sorry, that’s life. The reality is if you don’t have a great cover you aren’t going to hook ‘em in the first place and they’re not going to read your truly fabulous story.

I suspect it’s always been true, but modern life has only exacerbated the problem. With all the distractions we have, work, cell phones, the net, video games, hardly any free time in between, you want to give your reader some eye candy to lure them in.

The take-away here is check and double-check. Everything. Twice.

Don’t let something stupid or blatantly obvious slip through the cracks. Don’t think, ‘if it’s there they’ll buy it,’ because they won’t.

And readers, I don’t blame you. I’m a writer in addition to being a reader and I understand. We can all forgive an occasional typo or maybe a left-out close quotes, but if it’s peppered throughout the book it becomes unforgivable.

Writers, I understand your pain as well. There are a whole lot of platforms to publish with out there, Amazon, Smashwords, Create Space and others and every one has a format that claims “It HAS to be exactly my way”. There’s a lot to dead with but that’s exactly why you have to be on your toes and get it right. It’s much too easy to get it wrong.

So get your work out there, but get it right. Thrill your readers and boost your books. And proudly do the work all Indies can also take pride in.

Go ahead, tell us about your good and bad reading and writing adventures in Indie world. Let’s see what’s right and what needs to be fixed.

The Publishing, Writing And Reading Revolution

Publishing and by extension, writing, are in the throes of a revolution the like of which has not been seen since the invention of the printing press.

Out there is a whole brave new world (or maybe not so brave but undeniably new).  If you’re a writer in nearly any field you can’t have missed the chat, buzz and hair-pulling about the new direction publishing is taking. If you’re a reader (and writers are readers in addition to their writing hats) you can’t have missed the rapid changes; the introduction of electronic readers, the ability to read with smart phones and tablets and of course the old paperback, hardback, newspapers and magazines still fight for their place in the market.

But, as always there’s more than one side to a coin. You’ll read some articles raving about it’s the best time ever to publish, that things are shifting rapidly in favor of the author. After all there’s self-publishing now with Print On Demand and EBooks, along with the traditional publishing paradigm. Things are great, right? Things can only get better and better.

Then there’s the writer who tells us about the decline in book sales and e-book sales. So it appears people are buying fewer books each year, that people want their stories ‘visual’ meaning video and graphic novels, anything to avoid reading the written word. They want to return to childhood when they saw one big illustration and six words on a page. So, in the long run, things are actually getting worse for writers, right?

Here’s the thing. In my estimate they are better, to a point. There are more opportunities for writers. The major declining sales argument stems from statistics gleaned from the big publishers and book sellers. The ‘wonderfulness of it all’ stems from the folks in love with the new direction things are taking whether it’s Print On Demand or E Books. In either case the writer is usually asking why can’t I get published or if self-published, why aren’t my books selling as I’d believed they would?

Okay, readers, here’s where you come in. You’re the central element. What motivates you? Do you have enough books in a wide enough variety within your grasp to read when the mood strikes? Yep, I have old fashioned books on old fashioned shelves, but I also have a Kindle (it’s crammed full) and if there was some tragedy and I escaped my house falling down with only my pets and my Kindle I’d be well supplied with reading material for months – with the capability of downloading more once I reached a computer and could access online resources. Or hitting a Wi-Fi hot spot where I could download direct to the Kindle.

So what does all this mean? It means that readers have a whole lot more choices to. Where once they looked for bargains at yard sales, used book stores and promotions at the ‘Big Box’ booksellers, or just went to a library, now they can add to that list access to plenty of digital material much of it low cost or promotionally free or buying used books online. And don’t forget the thousands of public domain books that can be downloaded from many sites free.

Let’s face it, Amazon became the giant in this arena and now people can download books to their reading devices and take an entire library, including business oriented reading material in pdf format, anywhere they go. And readers can download even more anywhere they can tie into an online connection.

And for those readers who still love to hold a book in their hands and caress it, there are literally thousands of additional titles now that would never have hit the shelves courtesy of Print on Demand from such sources as CreateSpace. This is good and bad with the thousands of writers jumping in to take advantage of the sudden, new opportunity.  There are some exceptional writers who are gaining exposure. Then there are the ones who can’t spell, can’t punctuate, haven’t taken the time to edit and manage to turn some readers off altogether. C’mon guys, if we’re going to do this let’s all get professional. 

 

So, bringing it full circle, the writer needs to realize the reader is not simply now spoiled rotten when it comes to choices, that reader is positively swamped.  The reader still has all of the old resources (how that will change in the near future remains to be seen) plus the ever expanding online universe offering used books and Ebooks.  And the competition is fierce. Who wants to pay the publishers’ inflated prices for the newest paperback when there are so many other choices?

In the end it’s kind of scary out there for writers – in addition to being very exciting. Supply right now outstrips demand in a big way creating one heckuva buyer’s market for the reader. There always were writers who simply shouldn’t, but now they do and they’re pumping hundreds of thousands of new books into the market (most of which aren’t worth reading).

On the other hand, oh, joy for the writer, thousands of writers have beaten the odds. There have been spectacular break-outs. There have been writers published electronically who have gotten very nice contracts from traditional publishers. There have been writers who have done so well on their own they’ve refused said contract from said traditional publisher.

As the writers we need to clean up our acts, get some beta readers so you know that book is worth reading, edit it and polish it up both with all the grammar and language angles and with the formatting for the new venue angle. In other words take time to think not only as a writer, but as the reader you are as well. To get the reader to choose one writer’s work over another the writer has to make it worth the reader’s while.

It’s one thing to offer a book on a free day to attract readers – it’s quite another to make that read so fascinating, so compelling that that reader remembers your name and watches for your next book. 

Writers And Readers Websites Wednesday - PubSlush

 PUBSLUSH - For Everyone

Head on over to PubSlush "A Community Connecting the Writing World to Readers". 

Something for everyone here - Readers. Writers, Publishers. And they support the fight against illiteracy, support industry professionals and Literary Projects and more. 

A great community to get involved with for anybody who reads, writes, or is involved with the industry. 

Go ahead - surf on over and visit.

Writers And Self Publishers - The Ultimate Resource Guide

Usually on Wednesday I offer up a link to a site I've found on the web that I enjoy or think is really worthwhile. 

Today, instead, I'm going to talk a little about The Self-Publisher's Ultimate Resource Guide

I was given a copy to review. It's gotten 89 reviews on Amazon at this writing and the vast majority are in the four and five star category. In my opinion it's a great resource. Of course it can be expanded upon (what can't?) Of course it's a compendium of lists (what do you expect?) The book is giving the self publisher resources. And it's organized into three categories; Prepare, Publish and Promote. 

There's not much fluff and not much commentary, which for me was actually good. It got right to the meat of things. And, I noted a couple of complaints that the links within the book weren't correct.  I had no such problem and indeed have found it most handy to jump from one section to another very easily. 

It's a book I'll keep handy when I'm thinking about who I need to contact for editing or illustrating, for Ebook conversion, book reviews and marketing - and yes, dare I say it, a whole lot more. 

My only sticking point was the subsidy publishers listed under publish. It didn't quite seem like something needed in a resource guide for self publishers - but then again, that could just be me.

Writers and Readers Websites Wednesday - Bookworks

First HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Okay with that out of the way, the website for this week is BookWorks. Why? 

Because it offers so much. The blog is chock full of how to articles and info - a part of the self-publisher's association.

And there's even more - see that 'back to bookworks.com' button thingie at the top right? That takes you to the main site where even more helpful information for the self publisher awaits.

Go ahead, visit and explore - see what you can discover.

Writers And Readers Websites Wednesday - Writing And Publishing

 

Writer? Then this site's for you. Publishing And Other Forms Of Insanity - aka, Published To Death. A blog run by Erica Varillo, it offers lots of resources and tips - and lets you know what she did wrong along the line. 

Articles, Links, resources you'll find it here. 

Reader? If you want a glimpse into the writers world and the world of publishing - come on in, you'll find it eye-opening and interesting.

Publishing ... and Other Forms of Insanity

Publishing ... and Other Forms of Insanity

Writers And Readers Websites Wednesday - a blog for writers and readers too

My Wednesday pick for this week is the blog of Anne R. Allen, author of comic novels and more who puts this blog out there - 'mostly writing about writing'. It's a 101 best websites for writers winner from Writer's Digest and she keeps on posting.

A string of interesting, informative and at times humorous articles. Go visit!

Writing And Publishing - From The Beginning

Okay all you readers and writers out there. Have you given much thought to the distance we, as human beings have covered to come to where we are with communication through the written word?

Storytelling?

The news?

Advertising?

All the other reasons we put words to paper?

Yes, we’ve gone from slapping our handprints on cave walls along with crude drawings to hand-written scrolls to printing presses to computers with a few side-trips along the way. We are communicating like never before – for better or for worse. Drag your feet or dive right in. It doesn’t matter. It’s here to stay and it’s moving forward.

I came across this wonderful site, A Brief History of Publishing – In Pictures that created an infographic on the history of publishing, starting with cave paintings and ending with Amazon first reporting ebook sales outnumbering print book

Sales. Yep, if you’ve turned your back and haven’t noticed, it did happen. The digtal world is exploding.

It’s fascinating and an eye opener and I thought I’d share it with my readers. The progression is fascinating, many of the pictures amusing and educational. It’s short, but then that’s what we expect of such websites, no?

Take a look, then tell me what you think the next great step forward is going to be!