To Self-Publish? -- That is The Question Every Writer Faces

Can you really, truely succeed if you self-publish? Are you stuck in the ghetto if you give up on traditional commercial publishing too soon?

Was ambling down the post on my Facebook page between chapter edits of There Be Demons. At Chisled Rock, J. A. Kazimer -- a romance, mystery writer -- blogged about the "7 Things I Wished I Knew Before I Indie Published". She doesn't knock it. In fact she's planning to repeat the process ever though the sales were disappointing. Read her comments and be forewarned about what you must do, especially in the dreaded area of marketing.

-- Thought Kazimer was right on. May be glad that my self-publishing efforts are to build platform more than selling epubs to make money. Though my self-published novella [Troublesome Neighbors] has sold more than the indie publisher one [Taking Vengeance].

-- Psssst. Don't tell the Grumpy Dragon that I may still self-publish if I ever am able to get some short stories written.

One Writer's Progress

On LinkedIn, I read a lot of unsuccess stories. I can even contribute grumps of my own. But self-published writers can achieve greater success as they go through the process of writing and self-publishing. Milo James Fowler is a case in point. He's self-published lots of short pieces including the funny western fantasies about Coyote Cal [Amazon]. I networked with him first at Write One, Sub One -- basically a group who aim to write and submit at least one story a week. Fowler combined stories written in 2011 for Immaterial Evidence.

-- Even joined it in hopes of speeding up my own writing ... but fell by the wayside. First couldn't keep up. Second my ideas tend to turn into novels.

Back to Milo. Since he has lots more reviews that I do, I assume he's more successful with his self-publishing. Now. Ta-dah. Musa Publishing is released his new book Immaterial Evidence. 

Tagline: A detective with a price on his head. An invisible criminal with nothing to lose...  Basically, it a story about a private detective who comes out of hiding to help the FBI solve an impossible theft. If it's runs true to form, you'll get more than one chuckle along with your mystery.       

So a book you like gets published: What can you do to foster its success -- especially if a friend wrote it. Chuck Sambuchino of Writer's Digest blogged at Writer Unboxed about ways to support a writer's new book. Some of the support tactics are real simple and don't cost anything. Some of them are even doable by the author anonymously.

-- Now if I wish I was the type who networked easily. Fowler is good at it and has all those Write One, Sub One rooting for him. He has implemented some of the marketing advice: built a following with his stores and his networking activities. 

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Progress of sorts. I'm building up a sympathetic character to be killed later in There Be Demons. I'm also starting to Twitter-promote it with the hashtags #WIP, #novelines, #writer, and #amwriting. I'm not impressed with Twitter, but I'm doing it anyway. Also mention what I'm doing on my author Facebook page. [I even have some 60 likes and 20-some reads on the page.]

Also am still rewriting the first couple of chapters of Forbidden Fruit, the beginning Far Isle Half-Elven story, for my critique group.  -- Then I'm going out and read under the hackberry. If I'm lucky the hawk will come sit in the bird bath. For some reason we aren't seeing many small birds again this year.

Taming Those *#@!& Words: Some Useful Links

The job of every writer is to pile up the words, good, bad, delicious or indifferent. But, what do you do when the words don't come?

One of the sneaky ways I boost my word count is with dialog. For some reason I write dialog faster than most other stuff. Once the dialog is down, I then revise for setting, emotions, reactions, descriptions, and all that other stuff.

We won't go into the quality of my dialog, but Mayra Calvani gave some interesting tips on writing good dialog on a guest blog: Eight Tips to Writing Great Dialog. I found it at S. J. Clarke's website.

Yeah, it's one of the articles that gave me some useful insights into what I'm trying to do. I printed it off ... in hopes I'll be able to find it again ... if and when I ever get around to doing a major revision of something already in my confuser. Why? I think her main points make a good check list when you're retooling your story line.

What else do I double check when I revise? Commas.

Every once in a while, I get knocked for using commas. [Seems I follow the Oxford or some other grammatical rule or other.] A lot of people think I use too many of them. But, I'll keep using them since they help me understand what I'm reading.

I also use a lot of "ing" words -- without caring whether they are gerunds or past participles. I think of "ing" words as indicating on going action. I was happy to see that Kira McFadden over at Novel Publicity & Co. tried to put me straight in her blog on "ing" word use.  She tried, but she may have better luck with you.

Of course, once you finish revising ... The Passive Guy gives you some things to consider about self-publishing.  Do you know why you want to self-publish? If you want to be a best-seller, I think you should listen to what he says. Yeah, I know I've self-published ... and plan to self-publish my pig story. But, I'm building a platform which is a different kind of thing from than hoping to sell for fun and profit.

Of course, you're going to have to insert bunches of words into your computer if you're going to revise. So, last but not least, I want to share with you a writing plan that made me tired just looking at it. Kristan Koster wrote about her writing plan for this summer on her blog Impulsive Hearts. How does your summer schedule compare?

I'm keeping my same old, same old. Some days, I even get something new written.

Self-Publishing or a New Strategy for Marketing?

My muse stomped all over my lap/chest during my cat-and-coffee sessions the last couple days as I wondered about marketing books ...  Self-publishing isn't my bag.  (Too much work.  Hey, people, you have to be the whole publishing house ... in spite of the promises of vanity presses.)  Self-publishing can be the way to go, but most people don't have the skill set ... or inclination ... to make a success of it.  The problem:  there're no neat boxes.  Authors, irregardless of their publishers, must promote their books whether they want to or not  -- if they want to sell more than 10 copies -- so they become a de facto part of the marketing department even if the department ignores them.

Why these thoughts?  My brain is  revolving around what e-publisher I should submit Mariah to next, now that I withdrew it from the place that had it almost a year and didn't reply to my status queries.  

If I manage to sell something/anything, I'm expecting the publisher to have a marketing template of some sort to help me help them market my "minimum opus".  Question:  If you can't trust a publisher to answer your legitimate questions, how can you trust them to help you make your book a success.  [It's a test, sort of like comparing the vanity press ads in the New York Times Book Reviews with the ads by major publishers.  Which do you think is more effective?]

Then, on my blog roll Deborah Schneider on 1st Turning Point mentions the Expresso Book Machine, a POD publishing deal that lets book stores print a copy of a title as needed.  Link.  Fast service for the customer.  Low upfront costs for the book store.  My mind ran riot with the possibilities with the first thought was self-publishers gained a way to more easily get their books into stores.

Then, with my brain [or the cat] jumping all over the placem I kept thinking of writers who go with e-publishers.  Why are they mostly limited to Amazon.com and their publisher sites?  What if lots of books stores had an POD center, and e-authors formed alliances around the country to get their group's authors into regional stores.  The logistics would be interesting to say the least ... but I love the possibilities.  Maybe, it might increase the cash flow of independent book stores.

The Read ...  Now for something different, Sandra Dallas' Whiter than Snow.  Dallas is a Colorado writer who has a fascination with Rocky Mountain gold mining towns.  (She also wrote Prayers for Sale.)  I think the books fall into the category of woman's fiction and explore the nature of hardship and healing.  Even her books not set in the Rockies explore those themes.

This is a best-selling author ... but forget action packed chapters.  Dallas  tells her tale with a chapter devoted to each of the characters involved in the tragedy as she explores the ways of the heart.  The hooks are magnificent:

1)  Opening sentence:  "No one knew what triggered the Swandyke avalanche that began at exactly 4:10 P. M. on April 20, 1920."

2) Last sentence of the first chapter:  "Four of the children survived."

Progress ... Am dithering.  Maybe to some effect.  Got the last chapter of Emma rewritten and overcame my inclination for having her flip her grandmother off.  [Not a nice thing for a tween to do.]

Still am managing to revise a couple chapters of Kaffy Anne a week ... in spite of everything.  Seem to have a fetish about characters with black curly hair though.  [Mine isn't ...  wasn't, even when I was young.]

Mariah's on the front burner again, but I don't know what I'm going to do.  Someone with any sense would call Dark Solstice a trunk-novel and shelve her.

Trivia ... Have become a part of an ill friend's transportation network.  Seems like there are more cruel diseases out there now days than when I was a kid ... or are people just living longer with them?

PS.  Seems I'm spending a lot more time watching my retirement portfolio after yesterday.  Fortunately, the anemic thing wasn't drained too badly.