The year I self-published my first book I was able to get onto a couple of panels at the Phoenix Comicon. I thought that was a big deal at the time. I was there as an author of Sci-fi/Fantasy, but the subject matter wasn’t my writing or my book. I was there more for being a fan of the subject with a little notoriety for writing a book. Still, that was nothing to sneeze at. On the last night of the event, I got to go to a “meet the authors” event. I was there as a fan, not an author as I didn’t have a publishing house representing me. While there I met a lovely woman who had published a number of supernatural romance books and she was kind enough to engage me in a lengthy conversation. She told me about her experience getting started and the struggles she went through. When I told her I was self-published she kindly explained to me that was a mistake. She went on to explain how you need a publisher to get your book into the places you need to be to sell them and to be taken seriously.
So, there I was, being told that the choice I had made to self-publish the book that I had spent nearly three years of my life on was a mistake. Yet, it wasn’t like I had a lot of options. I had tried to send my book into publishers, and I couldn’t find any legitimate publishers who would take an unsolicited manuscript. They would only take book submissions through a literary agent. So, I tried to get an agent, but everyone I reached out to either said they were not taking on my new clients or didn’t work in my genera. There were some ‘publishers’ who responded to my inquires who said they would love to publish my work, for a fee. The deals were always ‘we’ll get your book distributed around the world, all you have to do is pay for our editing, art, and other publishing cost and then you’ll earn a percentage of your royalties. Having asked other writers I knew through social media, I was advised to avoid those places because they were usually people running a business off their laptops who were just taking people’s money to run their books through a self-publishing site like KDP. There were a couple that was legitimate but still wanted around $10,000 to publish my book with no guarantee I would sell anything.
The reason I decided to do it myself was that if I was going to pay for everything, I wanted to control everything and keep 100% of the ownership of my book. I ran a contest for my cover art and picked the design I liked the best. I asked my wife, who has a background in English lit and education, to edit my book and I researched how to market. I selected a print-on-demand publisher who only charged me when I needed something printed and I looked for local events to promote.
At the time I didn’t know if I had made the right decision or not. Yes, I would have loved for a big publishing house to offer me a big check as a signing bonus, publish 20,000 copies of my book and distribute it to book stores everywhere, and pay me to travel all around to do book signings. But, that doesn’t happen in the real world. At least I have yet to meet any author who had that happen with their first book. The only ones I’ve met who get to go around on someone else’s dime to promote their own books are people who have written several books, build a following of fans, and made it to the best sellers list, mostly on their own.
I published my first book in 2014. It’s now 2020, I have five books self-published in e-book, print, and as audiobooks. I have book number six coming out in a few months and more projects in the works. Over the years I’m made mistakes and learned a lot along the way. For the first five years, I spend more money on my books than I made. Last year I almost broke even and this year I’m making a profit. A few things happened over the past year that really made a difference. I started a new series that was more popular than the first. I switched to KDP which gave me the ability to market directly to Amazon. I then took a class on how to market in Amazon without spending a lot of money. An oversea publisher contacted me asking for the rights to publish my work in the South Asia market and I was contacted by some podcasters to do interviews. Now a couple of my books are starting to show up on some best sellers list and getting the notice I always hoped they would.
So, if you have a dream of being an author, or you are one and you are struggling, have hope. If I can make it happen, anyone can.