Two more excellent questions from reader and commenter Michelle (a.k.a., The Barenaked Critic):

http://blog.jeanmariebauhaus.com/What makes [self-publishing] so fulfilling for you, personally? Would you ever want to go the traditional route with a future book?

The answer to the first question has bearing on the answer to the second, so let’s start there. In my post about the pros and cons of self-publishing, I talked about how my personality and skill-set are both well-suited to self  publishing, and how my almost pathological fear and hatred of the traditional publishing submission process (in particular, writing query and cover letters) helped to drive me into the welcoming arms of indie publishing. Just the fact of getting to have my work read without having to put myself through that whole rigmarole is pretty fulfilling in and of itself. But that’s not a complete answer.

The whole truth is that I come from a fan-fiction background that completely spoiled me. I became addicted to the instant feedback nature of fanfic. I jokingly referred to myself as a praise-whore, but that’s exactly what I was. Having people read stories written by me and then tell me how touched or moved they were by it was a cause for pure elation. When I decided to hang up my fanficcer hat and concentrate on writing original fiction, the single most difficult challenge I had to overcome was getting used to the solitary nature of it, of playing everything close to the vest and not getting to know what anybody thinks of your work until it’s finished, and not getting to know what strangers think until it’s published; and at the time, when commercial publishing was still the only really viable way to go, whether or not strangers would ever be able to read my work was pretty much out of my hands.

I tried to get around this and get my instant-feedback fix without technically self-pubbing by serializing my novels in locked Livejournal posts, but it just wasn’t the same. The rise of e-book and POD technology and the growing mainstream acceptance of indie publishing changed all of that. Of course, I still have to exercise discipline and not just blog every chapter hoping for instant feedback as I go; I still have to deal with the isolation of the writing and editing phase, which, I will tell you, is HARD. But no longer is it up to agents and editors in New York whether people outside of my friends and family will have the opportunity to read my stories and tell me what they think. My stories are out there, being read and enjoyed, and whenever a new review pops up, or somebody e-mails me or contacts me through my blog or Facebook to tell me how much they enjoyed my book, it’s back to pure elation. The giddy feeling that I get when just one person tells me that they loved my book makes it all worth it, even if my royalty earnings never add up to more than the occasional pizza allowance.

As for whether I would ever go the traditional route, the short answer is, sure. I think there’s plenty of room for both, and a lot of writers are getting more savvy about combining the two, using indie publishing to build a platform that will make them more attractive to traditional agents and editors. This path is proving successful for more and more people.

My goal is not to attain the “prestige” of getting published “for real” by a traditional big time publisher. My goal, ultimately, is to get my books in front of as many eyeballs belonging to the types of people who enjoy the types of books that I write as possible. If there is ever a point where traditional publishing is the best way for me to do that, then I will absolutely pursue that route. If somehow, by the grace of God, I achieve Hocking-like success and have agents and editors approaching me with a giant book deal? Uh, yeah, I’mma certainly consider it. But even then, I think it will depend on a lot of factors, including what the traditional publishing market looks like at the time, and whether it makes the best business sense to give up some of the rights to my own work.

But all of that is down the road a ways, if it’s on my road at all. For now, I’m still a beginner at this, and my focus is on just turning out the best books that I can as fast as I can and building up my catalog. I’ve set a five-year goal for myself, which I’ll expand upon in a later post, to be earning enough from writing and indie pubbing in 5 years to be able to retire my web design business and write and publish full time. So if I’m not there in five years, or anywhere close to it, I’ll re-evaluate this path that I’ve chosen as well as the state of the publishing industry as a whole, and go from there. But for now and the foreseeable future, I only have plans to self-publish.

Originally published at Marzipan Pie Plate Bingo. You can comment here or there.

In my previous post about getting over the stigma of self-publishing, commenter Michelle (a.k.a. The Barenaked Critic) asked me several good questions, one of which was to elucidate on the pros and cons of self-publishing. I think I pretty well covered the pros in my previous post: you avoid the sometimes years-long process of trying to get through the gatekeepers of traditional publishing, which often ends in rejection, often for perfectly good books that simply aren’t seen as marketable by those in charge; depending on the channels you choose to sell your book and what kind of fees they charge for the service, you get to keep anywhere from 75 to 100 percent of the royalties instead of having to give ten to 20 percent each to your agent and publisher; you never have to worry about earning out your advance, having your books remaindered, or seeing them disappear from the shelves after your publisher’s print run has run its course and they’ve moved on to other things; you have the satisfaction of having your work out there, being read and enjoyed and slowly but steadily building up your fan base; and last but absolutely not least, you have total control over your writing career.

Lest all of that sound too good to be true, there is a down side which prevents it from being right for everybody. Self-publishing takes a lot of work. You either have to learn how to be your own story editor, line editor, print formatter, cover designer and marketing and publicity agent, or you have to come up with the money to pay for those services out of your own pocket. I think self-publishing is such a good fit for me personally in no small part because I already brought to the table training and experience as both a copy editor and a graphic designer, and also a strong rapport with some trusted beta readers who are excellent at catching mistakes that I miss. To be honest, if I wasn’t confident in my own editing abilities, or in my ability to produce a professional-looking, eye-catching book cover, I probably wouldn’t have chosen this path, because there’s just no room in our budget currently for hiring out those tasks.

Another thing I bring to the table is writing experience. Restless Spirits is the first novel I published, but it is FAR from being the first novel I’ve written. Between finished trunk novels, half-finished attempts at novels, short stories, and several volumes of novel-length fan fiction, I more than put in my 10,000 hours before I reached a point where I thought my writing could stand up the kind of scrutiny under which my decision to self publish would place it. I’m not some starry-eyed young ingenue who thinks every word she puts on the page is the equivalent of candied rainbow unicorn toots and that the world just needs to wake up and smell her brilliance. I was 38 when I published my first book, and tired of and deeply discouraged by the current sorry state of traditional publishing.

I should make another confession here: I have made attempts to publish via the traditional route, but honestly, not that many. I’m impatient, I have a pathological fear of having to write cover and query letters, and I’m so prone to procrastination when it comes to submitting my work that usually I move onto another project before I ever get around to it and then it never gets done. Which is not to say that it has never gotten done — I have a nice, thick binder full of rejection letters that run the gamut from polite form letters to encouraging hand-written notes. I just hate the submission process and I, personally, would rather put in a hundred hours on editing and formatting and marketing my own work than sit down for two hours to try to craft a decent query letter and then drive myself completely insane while I wait several months for a response. In short, it should be noted that my personality is simply better suited to self-publishing.

But back on point; probably the biggest con to self-publishing, the one I see cited most often by successful traditionally published authors such as John Scalzi as the main reason why they don’t jump ship and go the indie route so they can rake in more money, is that you are completely on your own when it comes to marketing and publicity. There is no big publisher publicity machine to back you up. Although, from what I’ve read from midlist authors, these days the publicity machine is really only there for the established bestsellers, and even then, traditionally published authors are being expected to put in more and more time and work to market their own books. Just as the size of the typical new author advance has greatly diminished over the last few years, so has the amount of support a newly published author can expect from their publisher on the marketing front.

But make no mistake. Marketing your own books takes a lot of work, and it’s something you have to stay on top of if you want it to keep selling, especially in the early stages when you don’t yet have a fan-base who can be counted on to buy your next book.

Self-publishing takes a lot of self-discipline, and it also takes a lot of patience. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and the focus is on long-tail success, which might take years to achieve. It’s definitely not a path that’s suitable to everybody. But if you think it might be the right path for you, then I suggest the following blogs, which are practically required reading for anyone who’s even considering becoming self-published:

• J.A. Konrath’s A Newbie’s Guide to Self-Publishing
• Dean Wesley Smith’s blog
• Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• The Passive Voice

Originally published at Marzipan Pie Plate Bingo. You can comment here or there.

I FINALLY read this book (seriously, y’all, sometimes I almost want to quit writing just so I’ll have more time in my life for reading, which is not easy to come by as it is). It was an enjoyable read, as always, with lots of tugging at the heart strings and wanting to give Harry a big ol’ hug. The ending was pretty much exactly what I expected, although I kept wondering throughout the book how it was going to end up there, and although unsurprising it definitely set up some interesting dynamics for the continuation of the series. I don’t really have anything to add by way of review, just some fan-girl babble that I will place behind a cut because it is somewhat spoilery and also, fan-girl babble.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at Marzipan Pie Plate Bingo. You can comment here or there.

Thanks to everyone who offered feedback on the potential cover concepts for Dominion of the Damned. The general consensus was overwhelmingly in favor of the third concept, featuring a girl with a gun standing on a desolate highway, the feedback on which ranged from “least cheesy” to “awesome.” Of course, for practical and budgetary reasons I was hoping the majority would favor the second concept, which wouldn’t cost me anything to produce. But both aesthetically and conceptually I’m in agreement with the readers—I think the cover representing my protagonist is the strongest.

Now the next step is to purchase a high-res copy of the photo, which will have to wait until my next payday, and then refine the concept into something that is hopefully totally awesome and not at all cheesy—although, when you’re talking about a cover to a novel about vampires subjugating the human race in the wake of a zombie apocalypse, I have a feeling that a certain segment of the population is going to find a certain amount of cheese no matter what. And I admit that my vision of zombie hands reaching toward the girl from out of frame probably won’t do anything to decrease the cheese factor. Although that would probably be stretching beyond the limit of my Photoshop skills, so that version of the cover very well may not happen.

Feedback is also starting to come back in on the book itself, and if the consensus agrees with the first beta reader, I’m going to have a fair amount of rewriting to do before it’s ready for prime time. So, allowing for uncertainty and the fact that I ALWAYS underestimate how long stuff like this will take me to get done, we’re probably looking at a June release. Which is fine, as that gives me time not only to make the cover as awesome as I can make it, but also to get new author portraits made. Not that the old ones aren’t perfectly lovely, compositionally speaking, thanks to the EXTREME talents of my baby sister, but they were taken at an incredibly sucky time in my life, and also in the life of my hair. So a new portrait is definitely in order.

My agenda for today also includes drafting a marketing plan for the book, which I’ll share here once I get it nailed down. I didn’t have any kind of plan or do any pre-marketing for Restless Spirits, so it should be an interesting case study to see if any of that makes a difference for Dominion.

But first thing’s first, and that’s perfecting the cover. I’m sure I’ll be hitting you guys up for more feedback once I get it closer to the final version.

Originally published at Marzipan Pie Plate Bingo. You can comment here or there.

Six Books by lusi on sxc.hu

Over the last few years there’s been an explosion in self-publishing, with the advent of not just the e-reader, but accessible technology that makes publishing an e-book easy, low- or no-cost, and potentially very lucrative. And it’s not just e-books, either. Gone are the days of vanity presses where an author who couldn’t get published the traditional way would have no other option but to pay thousands of dollars to buy a print run of their book and then be on their own for selling all of those copies boxed up out in the garage. Print-on-demand web sites like CreateSpace and Lulu have made print publishing as accessible as e-publishing.

And yet, perhaps because it is so accessible that literally anyone can do it, and despite the fact that more and more professional, traditionally published authors are turning to self-publishing as a means of taking charge of their careers, there’s still a sense of snobbery toward self-publishing that prevents a lot of aspiring authors from going that route. It’s this idea that being self-published isn’t really being published; it doesn’t really count without the blessing of an agent and a major New York publisher. And there’s this pervasive fear that self-publishing will be seen as “giving up” and you’ll be looked down on by your peers and by the writing and publishing industry as a whole, and you’ll give up your chances for good of being traditionally published. That fear pervades even as one self-published author after another is making headlines by getting major book deals from the major publishing companies because of their self-published books.

I know because I had to get over this fear and sense of snobbery myself, and I still see it all the time among my aspiring author friends. I would look at self-published authors who were doing well and think, “That’s great for them, but I won’t feel like a real author if I don’t get traditionally published.” Obviously, I’ve gotten past this line of thinking. So what changed?

For one thing, I watched my fellow indie author David Michael, who I know locally from NaNoWriMo meet-ups, as he began and grew his self-publishing career. His books looked professional, he was getting excellent reviews and making money, nobody appeared to be looking down on him for being self-published, and most importantly, he seemed like he was having a blast. I saw him transform from a wannabe author like me into a professional career novelist, and it was awesome.

That inspired me to give self-publishing a little more consideration, and I started doing the math. I could go the traditional route with my newest novel and send out agent queries. If I was lucky, I would hear back from one or two agents in three to six months who asked to read my novel. If I was really lucky, I’d hear back another six months after that from one of them wanting to represent my book. And if I was exceptionally blessed, I would hear back in another six months to a year that they’ve found a publisher for my book who wanted to pay me a $5,000 advance (yes, that’s the average size of advances for new authors these days; the giant, six- or seven-figure advances you hear about in the news make headlines because they’re so rare that it makes them newsworthy when they happen). And then I just have to sit back and wait another two years or so for the official release date!

But as an aside, let’s say you’re one of the very, very lucky ones who scores a $100,000 advance. Divide that over the year (or several) that you spent writing and polishing the book, the additional year or two (or three) that it took to find an agent and a publisher, and the additional two years it takes the publisher to actually publish the book… and congratulations! You’ve now made the equivalent salary of an underpaid schoolteacher.

So I could go that route, or I could try this self-publishing thing. I could cut out the middle-man and take my stories directly to the readers—something musicians and other types of artists and creatives are expected to do, with no stigma attached—and I could have them out there, getting read and building a fan-base and making money. Not a lot of money, especially in the beginning, but percentage-wise, a lot more than I’d be making per book than if I had an agent and publisher both taking their cuts. And I would only need to sell about 2,300 books at $2.99 to make the equivalent of that $5,000 beginner’s advance. And I wouldn’t have to worry about having a limited print run and a short window of time to sell enough books to earn out that advance before they all got remaindered and taken off of the shelves, because virtual store shelves never run out of space and virtually published books never go out of print.

Taking all of that into consideration, it seemed like kind of a no-brainer, and yet I was still hesitant. What gave me the final push was an epiphany I had one day when I was looking at a paperback that my husband had just gotten from Amazon. I was looking to see who had published it, and I realized that it was a self-published POD book from Xlibris. This wasn’t obvious at first glance, and I was impressed with the quality of the book. I asked my husband if he realized the book was self-published, and he said that he hadn’t realized it—nor did he care. That knowledge made absolutely no difference whatsoever to his desire to read that book, and it wouldn’t have made any difference in his decision to buy it.

That’s when I realized that the self-publishing stigma is limited mainly to aspiring writers and to those whose livelihoods are threatened by the rise of self-published books—and even among that latter group, the stigma is waning as they begin to mine self-published authors for talent in order to stay afloat. Among the vast majority of the reading and book-buying public—the people who turn books into best-sellers—the stigma doesn’t exist. They simply don’t care where a book comes from, as long as it’s a good read. Oh, sure, there are the literary snobs who turn their noses up at self-published books, but these are generally the same people who also turn their noses up at genre and commercial fiction, and they are in the vast minority. The average citizen reader couldn’t give a rat’s poop whether the book they hold in their hands came from Simon and Schuster or from CreateSpace.

And that is when I realized that the stigma shouldn’t exist for me, either, and I decided to become a self-published author; and in terms of personal gratification and career satisfaction, it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Originally published at Marzipan Pie Plate Bingo. You can comment here or there.

This time for Dominion. I have an opinion, but I’m going to keep it to myself for the time being.

First, the cover I originally mocked up waaay back in 2009 for NaNoWriMo (which isn’t really up for consideration–it’s just so you can see where I started from):

And now a more stylized and abstract version of the same theme:

And finally,  one that puts the focus on my main protagonist:

Which one entices you the most, dear readers?

Also, thanks for all the feedback on the new Restless Spirits cover. Since opinion was divided pretty evenly over the light vs. dark versions, I went ahead and used both — the dark on the paperback and BN.com, and the light on Amazon and Smashwords. I’ll see which, if any, has the greatest impact on sales, and then go with that one across the board. That’s the beauty of e-publishing–nothing is set in stone.

Originally published at Marzipan Pie Plate Bingo. You can comment here or there.