Hi everybody. Here to share my self-publishing story.
I self-published my first novel, Moshiah, back in April after dozens of rejections from trade publishers/agents. It’s the third novel I’ve written but the first I felt was decent enough to share with the public. It took me two and a half years and five drafts to produce 60,000 words. Before publishing, I shared the entire manuscript with a writing group who helped me polish it. I had an artist friend create the cover art. I initially released it as an eBook on Amazon Kindle, granting them exclusive e-rights for three months so I could utilize their giveaway program. In May, I released a hardcopy version via Createspace.com and held half a dozen giveaways on Goodreads.com.
Five months later, I’ve moved about 130 units, 65% of them free downloads from Amazon. I haven’t crossed the sales threshold on either platform to actually receive a royalty check. Moshiah has been given three 5-star ratings, one 4-star rating, and three actual reviews. I’ve received several private messages from friends/acquaintances—very kind and positive. I’ve had close to three dozen conversations that started: “I heard you published a book. Impressive.”
Given those numbers, I wouldn’t call mine a success story—at least, not one that other prospective self-publishers would be eager to emulate. But it’s the most important thing I’ve ever done, so here’s what I took away from it:
1.) Get into a writing group. The group I joined comes from diverse backgrounds, has diverse interests, skill levels, aspirations…some are published writers, some not. But having someone else put eyes on my work was the biggest sober-slap of my life. My fourth and fifth draft of Moshiah happened because of the feedback the group provided. They didn’t demand it; hearing their feedback, I demanded it of myself.
2.) Get a proofreader. I read and reread my story a dozen times, but after my initial Kindle release I had a friend contact me with a dozen grammatical errors in the first fifty pages. Completely unacceptable. Luckily Amazon makes it really easy to upload new versions, so only a handful got out to the public. In a way, it was like I had beta-readers who actually paid me to proofread my book. However it’s not a business model I plan on repeating.
3.) Establish an e-presence. Nowadays everyone knows this, but it bears repeating. I got on Wordpress.com and linked it to Tumbler, Twitter, Goodreads, and Facebook; one post, five avenues. Wordpress is designed for blogs, but I’ve found a really clean layout which I use just to post announcements, samples, links, etc. Fairly professional, no webmaster needed. (cravenwrites.com)
4.) I'm keeping my day job. Fortunately, this isn’t a lesson I had to learn the hard way. I don’t want to work my soul-sucking cubicle job any more than the next aspiring writer, but I somehow have managed to simultaneously hope for the best but prepare for the worst—the worst being reality. Meanwhile, I’ve seen too many people chase down various “dreams”, chase them early in the game, chase them recklessly. It’s not enough for them to write—or run an indie theater on the weekends or start their own barbeque business on the side; they had to drop everything for the sake of their dream, for their art. They wanted it now, all of it now. As if the only thing standing in their way was those 40 hours a week that put a roof over their heads and food on their tables. From what I’ve seen, after a few months, Maslow’s hierarchical foundations start a-trembling and now these folk are so busy struggling that their productivity has actually decreased. Again, to be fair, do you really want to take this advice from the guy with the unread novel? Maybe those 40 hours really are standing in your way. It’s your call to make. But I have to ask what’s more important: art or artist? I’m all about the former and find the daily grind keeps me hungry. And on the flipside, who is the real tortured artist? The Bohemian futzing around in cafes on rainy mornings or the browbeaten lemming looking for one shred of meaning in his inane routine? (I think #4 more so applies to the younger crowd; if you have the means to quit your job and not struggle, by all means do it now and tell me your secret).
Anyway. Not a success story. Just my story.
I self-published my first novel, Moshiah, back in April after dozens of rejections from trade publishers/agents. It’s the third novel I’ve written but the first I felt was decent enough to share with the public. It took me two and a half years and five drafts to produce 60,000 words. Before publishing, I shared the entire manuscript with a writing group who helped me polish it. I had an artist friend create the cover art. I initially released it as an eBook on Amazon Kindle, granting them exclusive e-rights for three months so I could utilize their giveaway program. In May, I released a hardcopy version via Createspace.com and held half a dozen giveaways on Goodreads.com.
Five months later, I’ve moved about 130 units, 65% of them free downloads from Amazon. I haven’t crossed the sales threshold on either platform to actually receive a royalty check. Moshiah has been given three 5-star ratings, one 4-star rating, and three actual reviews. I’ve received several private messages from friends/acquaintances—very kind and positive. I’ve had close to three dozen conversations that started: “I heard you published a book. Impressive.”
Given those numbers, I wouldn’t call mine a success story—at least, not one that other prospective self-publishers would be eager to emulate. But it’s the most important thing I’ve ever done, so here’s what I took away from it:
1.) Get into a writing group. The group I joined comes from diverse backgrounds, has diverse interests, skill levels, aspirations…some are published writers, some not. But having someone else put eyes on my work was the biggest sober-slap of my life. My fourth and fifth draft of Moshiah happened because of the feedback the group provided. They didn’t demand it; hearing their feedback, I demanded it of myself.
2.) Get a proofreader. I read and reread my story a dozen times, but after my initial Kindle release I had a friend contact me with a dozen grammatical errors in the first fifty pages. Completely unacceptable. Luckily Amazon makes it really easy to upload new versions, so only a handful got out to the public. In a way, it was like I had beta-readers who actually paid me to proofread my book. However it’s not a business model I plan on repeating.
3.) Establish an e-presence. Nowadays everyone knows this, but it bears repeating. I got on Wordpress.com and linked it to Tumbler, Twitter, Goodreads, and Facebook; one post, five avenues. Wordpress is designed for blogs, but I’ve found a really clean layout which I use just to post announcements, samples, links, etc. Fairly professional, no webmaster needed. (cravenwrites.com)
4.) I'm keeping my day job. Fortunately, this isn’t a lesson I had to learn the hard way. I don’t want to work my soul-sucking cubicle job any more than the next aspiring writer, but I somehow have managed to simultaneously hope for the best but prepare for the worst—the worst being reality. Meanwhile, I’ve seen too many people chase down various “dreams”, chase them early in the game, chase them recklessly. It’s not enough for them to write—or run an indie theater on the weekends or start their own barbeque business on the side; they had to drop everything for the sake of their dream, for their art. They wanted it now, all of it now. As if the only thing standing in their way was those 40 hours a week that put a roof over their heads and food on their tables. From what I’ve seen, after a few months, Maslow’s hierarchical foundations start a-trembling and now these folk are so busy struggling that their productivity has actually decreased. Again, to be fair, do you really want to take this advice from the guy with the unread novel? Maybe those 40 hours really are standing in your way. It’s your call to make. But I have to ask what’s more important: art or artist? I’m all about the former and find the daily grind keeps me hungry. And on the flipside, who is the real tortured artist? The Bohemian futzing around in cafes on rainy mornings or the browbeaten lemming looking for one shred of meaning in his inane routine? (I think #4 more so applies to the younger crowd; if you have the means to quit your job and not struggle, by all means do it now and tell me your secret).
Anyway. Not a success story. Just my story.
