Tag: self-publishing

Considering self-publishing

I’d like some feedback from my readers:  Would you read my e-book? Click the comment link below and comment. You can stay anonymous so you can honestly say, “I wouldn’t read your book. I don’t even know why I’m reading your blog except that I’m your long-lost great grandma and I’m so proud of you!”

I’m actually considering self-publishing for the first time, even though my books will probably languish there without anyone reading them except my friends (and I have few close friends who will go out of their way to read my work). Why?

  1. Because I need some sense of closure.*
  2. Because I can’t make an intelligent decision of whether to continue writing unless I get feedback**
  3. Because I can’t change the world, even a little, with them on my cloud drive.
  4. Because, although agents appear to disdain self-publishing, I imagine they disdain my queries, so I’m not behind.
  5. TWO HUNDRED REJECTIONS.
  6. Because, in a fairy tale, I might get discovered in e-book.
  7. Because I believe in what Quakers call leadings***.
The book I would self-publish would be Gaia’s Hands, a prequel to my Mythos series. It doesn’t touch on that series directly — no Archetypes — but involves the origin of the modern Garden of Eden, and the influence of Gaia, the Earth-soul. It also involves two unlikely protagonists — a professor of plant biology and her much younger poet suitor — and a seemingly sentient bean stalk. If you squint closely, you’ll recognize the terrain as Central Illinois, my childhood home. (Aunt Peggy, Carla, and others who read a previous draft — this has been edited and rewritten extensively.

* Books on one’s cloud drive don’t feel like finished works.

** Again, why I keep hoping people will comment.

*** (Sorry to get minority religious here). Quakers don’t necessarily believe everything happens for a reason, so we’re not going to tell you God needed a little angel when your kid dies. However, they strongly believe God tells us to pursue something, and when we get that feeling, we seek clearness committees of our peers to sound out our leading. I never had a clearness committee on my leading to write, which may be the problem. I haven’t been able to suss out a meaning myself, because of my bad luck in getting an agent/getting published.

140 characters or less

Yesterday, I participated in SFFPit on Twitter. This is one of several pitch sessions scheduled annually, in which authors get several hours in which to pitch their books in a 140 character summary. I pitched three of my manuscripts (the first book of three different threads — I have written 5 total). One of them, surprisingly Gaia’s Hands, got a nibble from a small press.

I sent in my query (cover letter, contact label, marketing plan*, synopsis) and this means I have three queries out. Then I researched the press, and what I read made me nervous.

First, most queries don’t include a marketing plan. Traditionally, most authors do not want to market themselves, perhaps because we expect the publisher to promote us. This publisher will not like my marketing plan, because it will at best be me assisting a publisher who will market me.

Second, most of the books they have published have been works of a woman whose name looks very similar to the name of the head of the company, so it appears to have grown out of an individual’s self-publishing.

Third, and I made this clear in my marketing plan, I have limited time to market myself. I have a day job 9 months out of the year, teaching classes in human services and psychology. It’s hard enough to find writing time, and I only do so because I can’t stand being passive in my off-time and the voices demand that they be let loose on paper. (Ok, the only voices I hear are those of my characters, and I don’t hear-hear them. Don’t panic.).

Fourth, like many self-publishing outfits, their book covers are of a bare-bones variety familiar to readers of self-published fiction: black with a simple picture. (No, this is not a hill I would die on; it’s just that I have pictures in my head of what I’d like, and a niece I’d love to commission to do the work).

I will hear them out if they eventually want to take me on. I will run any contract past a lawyer if I get a bite (or at least run it past my friend who has retired from law, and I will pay him fairly even if that means taking his whole family to Pizza Ranch).

I feel sad, though, because this is the first nibble I’ve ever gotten on a pitch. Writers face an industry where it’s easier for the big publishers to pick new books that look like previous books that have sold well. I know it’s tough out there — a Facebook friend of mine, who has had several novels published, is now out of that contract. Luckily, she has enough fans and a good enough reputation that her fans will follow her to self-publishing.

Ah well, maybe one of the other two will bite.