Articles, how-to’s, opinion and tips and tricks in the self-publishing arena
50 or so panels a day. I was on one of them – “To Publish or Self-Publish” – with Ivory Madison, CEO of Red Room, Daniel Will Harris, a book designer, and author Christopher Meeks, who put the panel together. Read his […]
Three authors illustrate why maybe – just maybe – self-promotion doesn’t always work.
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(click for complete version)
I’ve been self-publishing novels for a little more than ten years. I’ve had some successes–for example, I’ve won the Writer’s Digest National Self-Published Book competition and I’ve sold more than 6,000 copies of my books. But I’m not a self-publishing rock star and I still dream of doing much better.
Here’s an essay on some things I’ve learned in ten years of doing this. Other versions of this essay appear elsewhere on the net, most recently on my site wetmachine.com, from whence you can download versions of my books for free if you feel like […]
When promoting your own book, the pain of promotion isn’t necessarily the amount of time it takes, but how it actually feels to be the salesman of your own work. It’s what makes writing a query letter so hard – not just condensing a book into a few words, but trying to be an advocate without sounding like a used car salesman. One of the problems you’ll see in self-published books is hyperbole on the back cover copy. It’s important to realize that self-published books and traditionally published books aren’t equal in this regard. So if a writer calls his/her […]
I think what may have killed my faith
in the formal channels
and gatekeepers
who hold the keys
to opportunity in the creative world
was, at least in part, the years I spent being a gatekeeper myself
first as an intern at Seattle Repertory Theatre,
then at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, CT,
where I and my interns would slowly, slowly , slowly plow
our way through the piles, and piles, and piles
of good, and bad, and terrible submissions
from authors and their agents.
When we were really smoking,
the scripts in our agent pile got […]
Or rather, why we don’t.
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To wit:
1) I will make more on my backlist first novel THE RED CHURCH this year than I did from its original advance. In other words, in the year it took the book to get through “traditional production.” And I can do whatever I want with it, forever.
2) My later publishing contracts tied up my rights for […]
There is a lot of talk about the “stigma” of self-publishing. But for the most part this stigma is rather contained. For example:
Mainstream Publishers/Agents: They don’t really care whether you self-publish or not. I mean think about this for a moment. If you’re self-publishing, you’re one less manuscript in their slush pile. If you fail, they don’t have to deal with you. If you succeed, then you are a proven quantity to them… a sure thing, which is something publishers like. So exactly why would they care? Publishers and agents reject bad writing all