Brave New World of Publishing

March 2nd, 2011 by csdaley

I was gone for a whole two days. Did you miss me? Don’t lie I know you probably didn’t even notice I took a few days off. I couldn’t have picked a better day to not write my first blog in two years because I came home, ate my dinner, and fell asleep. I think that might be the definition of exhaustion. The bad news is I woke up at 11pm and never went back to sleep. I should know better than to give into my sleeping whims.

It did give me a lot of time to think. You see I have wracked up a few more rejections on my first novel and was settling my mind around not getting it published. It was the first book in a trilogy. I have written the 2nd book already but have been holding off on the third because I really wanted to work on a new novel so I could have multiple books to send out. I felt a little guilty about this decision because I had readers who helped out on the first two novels who really want to read the third.

Which leads me back to all that thinking I have been doing. The truth is I come from a bookstore background. That background has a very high stigma on self publication and vanity press. It really is just not something you do if you want to have a successful career. Of course, this is the old model of publishing and no one really knows exactly what the new model is going to look like. The only thing we know for sure is it will be different.

Sheri and I are big supporters of independent music. We have actively contributed to several different musicians projects. Music is also going through a lot of growing pains but I find it interesting that there really isn’t the stigma of being a musician and producing your own album. Part of the reason for this is it has always been done. Musicians have been making demos, EPs, and albums since the beginning of the modern industry. You go to a concert of an up and coming band and you will see merchandise to buy at the end of the show.

With writing novels this has not been the norm but my gut tells me changes are coming. Don’t get me wrong I still think that publishing houses are important but I don’t think they are necessarily the gatekeeper anymore on what can and can’t be published. All of these thoughts rolling around in my head have led to one very important decision. I have decided to stop sending my first book out. I am going to put it out myself. I will start with it on the Kindle and then see how it goes from there.

I am not expecting some big miracle and an instant best seller. The truth is I hate the thought of something I worked so hard on just sitting on my computer. I admit to being a little scared. Throwing it out into the world means people I don’t know are going to read it. Many of them will probably have unkind words for it. It’s the nature of the beast. I have let a few people read the book so far. Some have loved it. Some have not but this is really not that unusual. Fiction is very particular, not everything is going to meet your taste.

If I leave the book on the hard drive it dies there. I didn’t write it for that to happen. I think I am a realistic person. I think my book is good. I think it deserves a chance out there. I don’t know how many people will buy it. I hope enough to cover my expenses to get it out there but I am really not going to worry about that. I created it. I didn’t create it to sit on a hard drive.

After I made the decision to go the ebook route I had a couple of other important choices to make. One is, I am going to act as professional as I can in this experience. So the first thing I will do is pay a designer to make me a book cover. Then I am going to have a person who was recommended to me get the book in the Kindle format so it looks all pretty. These things cost money but I am approaching this like I am an independent musician. I am going to treat my art with respect. If I don’t sell enough copies to make back the money I spend then I think that is a fairly clear indicator of what people thought of the book.

Again, I am not going into this thinking I am going to become the Stephen King of ebooks. I hope it does okay. I hope I find some readers who enjoy the book. It’s a brave new world and these are just going to be my baby steps into it. It has led me to the final decision that after I finish Keepers I will go back and write the final book of the trilogy while I am editing Keepers. This way anyone who is kind enough to join my adventure can at least see how it ends. I hope I will be able to convince some of my wonderful blog readers (you see how easily I slip into pander mode) to join me on this next step of my writing journey. If you have a Kindle, iPad (iAnything really), or computer the book will be coming out in about a month. This is also the deadline I am giving myself for my switchover to WordPress. I am going to be a busy bee.

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