Andrew Seiple's Blog: Transmissions From the Teslaverse - Posts Tagged "self-publishing"

One book completed, and now work starts on the next. This is how it goes in the self-publishing industry, and honestly, I don't mind one bit. The more I write, the better I get. It's like any skill, practice makes perfect.

So what's on the release schedule? I'm glad you asked that, hypothetical reader!

Things will be quiet for a while. Expect a mailing list story at some point, probably the second part of Freeway's origin. After that, in November, I'm going to release an ebook boxed bundle deal of Dire's first three novels, for new readers.

Somewhere around Christmas or January, there may or may not be a new MG Fantasy book set in a new, original world. Working title is "Final Frost", and it's about kid dragons fighting evil and saving their friends.

If the muse is kind, also around that timeframe will be another Fantasy book, this one for more grown-up readers. Think Game of Thrones meets Terry Pratchett's Discworld. But no promises on this one! It might take a few more months to get it juuuuuuust right. We'll see.

And the next Dire book, tentative title "Dire:Wars" should drop around March or April. There will be two more Dire books after that in 2017, and maybe another Teslaverse book if I have time to get it done properly.

So. Yeah.

Gonna be busy for a while.

Y'know what?

I'm looking forward to it!

Have you read Hugh Howey's blog? No? Well, it's a good read. You can find it over at http://www.hughhowey.com/

Hugh Howey's a very successful self-published author. He wrote a book called Wool, that got snapped up by a publisher, but he was sitting on quite a successful career before he became a published author. His bio's on the site, it's worth a read if you've got a few minutes.

The man's good. He's also had mixed experience with his forays into trade publishing, and has been an outspoken proponent of self-publishing, ever since.

I bring it up because his September 6 blog post is all about the state of Trade Publishing, and it doesn't look too good to him.

http://www.hughhowey.com/a-peek-behin...

Now... he is a hell of a writer, but I'm not sure just how much of a perspective he's got on big publishing. So take his post with a grain of salt.

That said, I find myself in agreement with what he's saying. The big publishing companies, on the whole, seem to be dropping the ball with ebooks. Remember a few years back, when published ebook prices on Amazon rose inexplicably? That was due to a lawsuit put forward by a major publisher.

What was happening, was that Amazon was marking the prices on published ebooks down. "Aha!" you might think. "No wonder the publisher was upset! They were seeing smaller royalties!"

Funny thing was, they weren't. Amazon was cutting prices down, but they were paying publishers the full royalty amount for the uncut price.

Essentially, they were slashing their own profit margins, and taking a loss.

Why?

Simple. Other ebook vendors couldn't match their prices. Amazon gained market share hand over fist. And with more copies sold, publishing houses were making a hell of a lot of money from Amazon as well. Amazon had set up a win-win situation, for everyone but the other ebook vendors.

So... why the lawsuit?

That, my friends, is a very good question. Because what the lawsuit DID, was pretty much destroy the ebook sales for the major publishing houses. Amazon couldn't adjust the price, so the ebook prices rose to the jacked-up sums that publishing houses demand.

Trade publishing doesn't really seem to GET ebooks. With the exception of Baen, mind you, whose free library project has been a breath of awesome air.

The only explanation I can think of as to why trade publishing blew off their own toes, is that they are trying to limit Amazon's influence by any means possible.

But... well, it didn't work.

The first reason that it failed, was that Amazon had already gotten too much market share for a move like this to matter.

The second reason is because of people like ME.

I put out good quality ebooks for prices that are more of a match for the existing market. I'm just one guy, but I can put out a handful of books a year. And there are many, many people like me, or better than me. And now that the big name publishers are abandoning the field, we're filling the void.

The demand's still out there. Kindle Unlimited wouldn't exist if the demand wasn't there. And for now, at least, we're doing good business. And New York's not seeing a cent of it.

I don't share Hugh's certainty that publishing is going to collapse any time soon. But I am pretty certain that it's going to change. Heck, the grudging acceptance that self-publishing has achieved in six or seven short years is a sign of that, people acknowledging reality.

Hopefully the trade publishers can acknowledge reality, before it's too late. Much as I don't like some of their business practices, they're nice to have around. Besides, I haven't entirely given up my dream of being on bookstore shelves some day...

The title of this post will require some explanation:

So, I'm a cautious person, prone to overthinking and analyzing. As such, I suffer a condition called buyer's remorse. This is what you feel after you buy something, and then you come to think that maybe you made the wrong choice. Buyer's remorse can hit regardless of whether or not you DID make the wrong choice. It's mostly a form of anxiety.

In this case, every so often, I sit down and ask myself if self-publishing was really the right choice. If I'd have been better off sticking it out, and sending queries out to agents and major presses. Usually my answer ends up being "Nah, self-publishing is awesome," but sometimes I wonder.

Then I saw this:
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/boo...

Long story short, an Irish publishing house (not even a very big publishing house) has started charging authors 100 Euros for unagented submissions.

What this basically means, is that authors who don't have an agent must send them 100 Euros (about $75) for the privilege of emailing them a manuscript. The publishing house then can reject it at its leisure and keep the 100 smackers.

100 Euros to give your manuscript to a guy who's 99.9 percent likely to throw it out the window without looking at it. Seriously, they're not even obligated to send you a response!

So instead of suffering from buyer's remorse, I'm now basking in buyer's satisfaction. I KNOW I made the right choice by self-publishing.

I pity the poor souls that gave this exploitative jerk free money. I pity the folks still stuck in a query-rejection cycle that never ends. And I move on, self-publishing with confidence, knowing that I will never have to depend on a flawed business cycle that allows such abuse of the writer.

Life is good. Life is better when you're not dependent on the validation of arrogant gatekeepers.

Good news!

So, in 2015 I self-published one book. 2016 saw two books self-published.

I'd set the goal for myself to have three books self-published this year, but circumstances have changed, somewhat. Thanks to my co-author finally getting some free time, it's going to be four.

Final Frost will be published over this summer. Don't know exactly when, probably in the June or July timeframe. It's about little dragons having big adventures, and friend, it is full of some glorious high fantasy.

This one's more for a middle grade audience, but don't let that stop you. I'll have more on it in the next couple of posts. Until then, I'll be working hard to wrap up Dire's second trilogy. Work on book five continues apace, and we are on schedule for a July launch, barring mishap.