More Authors Turning to Self-Publishing

Also, self publish as a last resort, and for god's sake don't actually write your book before you try to sell it or you can end up wasting a whole lot of time and work.

All of this being said, it's one of the most rewarding tasks you can take on in this business, if you have the right temperament and drive. Nothing like seeing that project slowly but steadily start to come together, and it also forces you to become a true storyteller with an almost cinematic scope to your tale.

 

To each his own. Depends on the book and on how you define "waste".

 

OK. Fine. I mean if you want to make any money. Is that a fair caveat? Having been there and done that, I hate to see would-be authors leaving money on the table and leaving themselves short just because they don't know how to go about pitching their idea.

This isn't a hobby for me. It's a profession. Maybe that taints my artistry, but like you said, to each his own.

 

You earn your living writing books?

Good on you, if so. Not many can say that.

 

Right now I do. We'll see what the future holds. I'm by no means staking my entire future to it just yet. Only a few - Feinstein comes to mind - have that level of comfort.

 

The article makes some good points but it's a mish mash, confusing vanity publishing with self publishing and calling people who create books that are nothing more than either glorified photo albums or business brochures authors.

A friend of mine just sold her first book for high five figures so, yes, there is--as Swenk will attest--money out there for the right kind of book. And, yup, you need an agent with good negotiating skills.

There are dozens of self-publishing success stories but for the most part they bat way below the Mendoza line.

 

Self-publishing will remain a very small niche for books with an extremely well defined but limited target audience. The stories of self-published books becoming best sellers are anomalies, not the norm, and never will be (and also nothing all that new). As an author who has earned a living from books for more than fifteen years, I think that in the vast majority of cases it would be a mistake to go this route. You can certainly get your book published, you may break even and perhaps make a bit of money, but it is far, far more likely you'll end up with a bunch of books sitting in boxes in the basement. And besides, all the time you have to spend schlepping and selling your book yourself, is time you are not spending writing, and to make it in the business you have to put in the time - nothing else is as important. I try to think one or two books and about five years ahead, so that while I am working on one project I am planning others. Example? Today I am going over the galleys of my next book, which will be published this summer. I already have a contact for the another book, due out in fall 2010 or spring 2011, am well into the research and will start writing this spring. I will probably have another proposal ready in a another week or two and I already have a pretty good idea of what the book after that will be. I'm hoping that gets mke over this recession. If I was going to try to sell a self-published title, all my other work would come to a halt. I can't afford to do that, and I can't see where self-publishing is any more viable now, when no one has money, than when business conditions were better.

And as an aside to those who have complained that they have the ideas but just don't have the time... I wrote my first few books while working fulltime, under horrendously compressed deadlines, and then after giving up the job wrote a 250,000 word monster while taking care of an infant all day long. If you want to do it, you get up at four a.m when you have to, to get a few hours for your book in the midst of everything else, and/or stay up til midnight. Can be done, and most who have published have had to do just that at one point or another.

 

In Exile

Good post.

The "I don't have time" is just an excuse.

Peter Newman, a household name in Canada, has written more than a couple of dozen political and business best-sellers over the past forty years, many of them while he was the editor of Maclean's magazine, Canada's version of Time

He'd get up every morning at 4:00 a.m., put on his headphones, listen to Stan Kenton and write until 8:00 a.m. Then he'd go off to work. Every single damn day. And these weren't 220 page lightweight tomes. These were 500 page plus works of non-fiction that also required a helluva lot of research.

 

As usual, In Exile says it so well, and makes me jealous of his/her agent. Wish all authors understood the realities of the business this well.

On all of these book threads, there seems to be a need to determine the absolutes of publishing, you have to do it this way or that way. Forget it. In 20-something years in this absurdly archaic business, I've never seen two authors follow the same path through the process. No one--not the editors or publishers or bestselling authors--knows anything. Obvious winners fail, and apparent losers succeed, every day.

 

For the record, I agree with this. My post was merely trying to urge people to respect the commitment it takes. It's not something where you can just toss off 1,500 words a day every day for a few months until - Voila! - Instabook!

 

I guess the short answer is, talk to the publisher and see what he says. There are newspapers with actual book publishing programs, newspapers that might promote the book with ads and give you access to photos and let you use your copyrighted columns, and they get a cut of the royalties. If you can show how the paper can profit without spending much/any money, it might be worth a shot.

 

RE: Finding time.

That is the true mark of getting it done as well. At least in fiction, I can just write. That's why I respect non-fiction writers a great deal.

Who has the time? I usually do. I work hours that keep me up in the middle of the night so when my wife and kids are sleeping, I'm usually good for an hour of writing (1500-2000 words). But I have to be inspired to write or else it'll stink.

I'll never make a living at writing fiction nor am I willing to try. The odds are too dead set against financial success for me but I love doing it.