Mykle Hansen, famous author of The Cannibal’s Guide to Ethical Living, recently posted an interesting article on his experiences with self publishing. You can and should read it here.
In the past, I’ve toyed with the idea of self publishing a book, however, there’s a lot of baggage that comes with this avenue. Certain publishers won’t even give you a fair shake and its difficult to get reviews.
There are some good places for self publishing like Createspace and Lulu. Recently, I’ve run across the Illustrated Section, a great place for comic book writers/artists to publish their own work.
The game is changing and evolving. Leisure is shutting down among other publishers. Small publishers like Deadite Press are beginning to rise up and take the baton and a do it yourself attitude is becoming much more acceptable.
Now you might be thinking I’m going to publish one of my own books. That is not the case. I have a novella being considered by a publisher at the moment.
So where am I going with this?
Well I think self publishing is losing some of the bad connotations associated with it and even in the chaotic state which is the publishing world, new opportunities will emerge from the ashes.
So get out there and blaze a fiery trail because I know I will.
There is no better time than now to embrace self-reliance…………………In order to change violence in objective reality you must destroy your enemies within. By training to defeat an opponent, you strengthen your power and influence over him. The vibrations you now emit are courage and confidence and belief in your own power. You repel and discourage harm from entering into your experience without engaging in conflict. The total vibrations of every moment are a reflection of your inner state of being. To change the outer you must change the inner.
I believe by self-publishing you restore a sense of pride in doing things for yourself, and this results in greater creativity and stronger motivation to achieve your desires. It also attracts more experiences and knowledge which strengthens your tendency and ability to do things on your own according to your own volition. Frankly, self-publishing, along with all self initiated activities, is a movement toward freedom. And this is a worthy undertaking no matter what your doing.
You might have scene my comment below Mykle’s post, but I noticed all of the authors in that bestselling indie list wrote genre fiction: romance (paranormal and otherwise), fantasy, science fiction, horror. And it might be ignorant of me to assume, but except for a few respected authors listed, I’m going to guess the books aren’t very good.
So I think the idea of self-publishing is better if you publish a book that fits one of those popular genres in a mainstream-y way. Also, except for the top seller in the list, most of the authors listed sell well as far as their kindle editions, but not their print editions. So I guess Kindle has really changed things in that regard. And as far as the top seller, I’m going to assume that her kindle editions started selling well before her print books sold well, and then that lead to print book sales.
So yeah, if you have a book that will appeal to the general populace, self-publishing may be a good idea. And definitely publish on Kindle rather than just in print. But I still feel like it’s not a very good idea unless you have a book like this.
If you self-publish and the book doesn’t do well, then it can turn off publishers, so it’s a gamble. Although if you self-publish and do well, you could also attract interest from publishers. Although if you’re selling enormous amounts of books yourself, you may not want to bother with a publisher so they won’t take a cut out of it.
Also, there’s one publisher in particular who may or may not be considering your novella who don’t allow their authors to have self-published books in print.
But there may be a way around it if you self-publish a book, it doesn’t do well, and you want to get published through a publisher with your next book but you’re afraid that it won’t happen because they may be displeased that you took the self-published route. I really have no idea, but you may be able to erase all existence of the book if no one ever mentioned it on a website, although I don’t know if that’s possible. You may be able to take down the book’s amazon listing after you take it out of print, but I’m not entirely sure. It my stay up for eternity. And the record of your book may continue to exist and be accessible by a publisher. This is all speculation and there are a lot of what ifs. I guess if you’re worried about what I’m talking about here, self-publishing probably isn’t a good idea.
Also, I don’t know anything about Createspace, but I know a little about Lulu assuming they haven’t changed their practices from years ago. They do a decent job printing job. And they’re pretty ok for an author because you can publish a book through them without paying a cent. But if you do that, then your book will only be listed on Lulu rather than also on Amazon. You need to pay a fee of some sort for that. And the cost per book for the customers will be very expensive unless you set the price at a cost where you won’t be making any money off the books whatsoever.
Instead of using a vanity printer, I would suggest using a print on demand printer and dealing with Amazon yourself. I can suggest a good company. And maybe getting your book printed through a printer called Lightning Source would be even better because unlike other non-vanity press printers, they work with Amazon as far as resupplying them with copies of your book and that would make things easier for you. I don’t know a lot about them because I haven’t used them, but they seem to have a lot of advantages of a vanity press without actually being one and their costs are lower than a vanity press. One thing I know is that you’re required to buy a certain amount of ISBN numbers before they will work for you. So you can’t just buy one, if that’s even possible.
And as far as comic books, there has never been a stigma against self-publishing. Creators have always embraced it.