A two-fer on my first day, I could wait until tomorrow, but I won’t. Might as well post as long as I feel I have some kind of material.
For the past couple weeks, I’ve been thinking about the notion of self-publishing. Don’t get me wrong; I haven’t decided fully one way or the other, but due to some recent reading, I’ve been more willing to entertain the notion of self-publishing. (Even though seeing my book in Borders is right up there with my top 3 writing dreams…I live for the idea of book signings…)
I stumbled across J. A. Konrath’s blog where he has recently decided to change his mind about how to go about publishing one’s work. I had read his blog before when he used to say try traditional publishing first, then think about self-publishing, a notion I had already came to in my head. Now, however, he has changed positions, as he now is more hard pressed to find a reason to have publishers take the author’s money when he or she can go out and sell on Kindle, Createspace, Amazon, Lulu, or Barnes and Noble for his or herself.
Now he does a much better job of explaining his reasons behind this decision than I ever could so I’d encourage you to read the last few blog posts that he has written…Hell, if you actually read about him and his numbers, I think you’d be fascinated enough to stay for a while. So I much, much encourage you to check it out, even if you are mentally opposed to the idea of self-publishing. It’s worth a gander (and no I wouldn’t say gander in normal life…)
What shook my thought process more than Konrath alone was Amanda Hocking’s story (which can be found on her blog). She’s a YA author, which already garners my interest, and she’s a paranormal author in my same age group-ish at that (um, hello…living my life here much? Except for not really, but I digress…). Her selling numbers are impressive, and I even felt compelled to buy her “My Blood Approves” book one. She’s making it, very well, I might add, in the genre of my choice, on her own (even though she now has an agent, Steven Axelrod). Gives a girl a lot to mentally chew on.
For those of you who have heard about either of these people or have a strong opinion either way about self-publishing, I’d love to hear your thoughts so comment below! Some questions:
- Could you (potentially) give up book signings and some prestigious award considerations to self-publish?
- Is the reader being put first by self-publishing (as in they get the book faster so they benefit) or are they being given a possibly worse product without the Big Publisher edit jobs? (And yes, I do know you can hire an editor for a self-publish…)
- Would you ever self-publish? What would be the circumstances to sway you that way?
