Samantha March: Why I Chose Self-Publishing

The months ticked on, and I was writing every chance I could get. CLP was growing as well, and I was meeting more people, making more connections, and hearing more advice. At long last, in the summer of 2011, Destined to Fail was complete. Now what? I told myself that I needed to try to get published in the traditional sense. I needed to write that query letter, I needed to give it my best shot of securing an agent. So I started working away. But I realized in the middle of writing my query letter and researching agents that my heart just wasn’t into it. I won’t lie––I simply was not into it. Why? Heck, I’ve asked myself the same thing. Who wouldn’t want the security of an agent and a publishing contract? Who wouldn’t want the advances and seeing your book in a bookstore? Why couldn’t I get excited about this?

Guest Post by Michele Gorman

Why self-publishing in the US

I thought long and hard before deciding to self-publish Single in the City in the US as an eBook. After all, the book was published by Penguin in the UK and many other countries in 2010. Penguin’s team helped make it a best-seller. Surely it’s better to go with a big publisher than to go it alone? If I’m not doing so, does it mean that I’m rejecting the big publishers, as many writers have recently done?

Not really. At least, not all of them. I loved working with Penguin UK. My editor Lydia Newhouse quickly became a friend (still is), listening to my suggestions and making sure the publication went smoothly. The sales team got the book into the major retailers and my PR Helen was superb, getting us widespread publicity.

I’m self-publishing because sometimes publishers have less faith in the books, and the readers, than we, the writers, do.

You see, when Caroline and I sold book rights to Penguin (UK), we held back the US rights. We did this because I wanted a US-based publisher for Single in the City’s American launch. After all the main character, Hannah, is American. There’s a strong theme about seeing London through rather baffled American eyes. Caroline and I thought that surely it was a great fit for the US market.

The US publishers we approached had a different point of view. They were all very nice about it but said that the book isn’t right for the American chick lit market. It’s set in London. Readers won’t identify with it, they concluded.

I disagree. Isn’t it a bit dismissive, and wrong, to suggest that American women can only be interested in books that literally reflect their own lives? If that were true then only mothers of homicidal children would buy We Need To Talk About Kevin, and nobody living outside the 19^th Century would bother with Jane Eyre. These books gain wide readership because they deal with universal themes (nature versus nurture, the effects of parenting, family, belonging, love). Single in the City is about taking a chance and establishing a new life. More than 5 million young American women do that every year when they move cities. It’s a fish-out-of-water story. And it’s about finding your feet in life and love. These, too, are universal themes. Those US publishers sold chick lit fans short.

And that’s why I’m self-publishing. I believe it’s the right decision for this book in this market. Like Hannah, I’m taking a leap of faith.

Michele loves to connect with her readers! Find her:

facebook: www.facebook.com/michelegorman3
twitter: @expatdiaries
website: www.michelegorman.co.uk

http://www.amazon.com/Single-in-the-City-ebook/dp/B005Y11DAQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321002537&sr=8-1

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/single-in-the-city-michele-gorman/1106848799?ean=2940013291126&itm=1&usri=michele%2bgorman

Guest Post from Author Holly Christine

On Self-Publishing

For me, writing is like preparing a meal. After toiling for days or months, I want to be the person who serves the hot dish. I want to be the one who says, Be careful. It’s still hot. I want to be the one who watches with a kitchen towel thrown over her shoulder, arms crossed across her chest, bags under her eyes, smiling as my guests say, This is delicious. What spice is this? Words.

Main Dish. Ingredients for writing Tuesday Tells it Slant: three weeks, 65,000 words, six to eight cups of coffee a day, four to five hours of sleep each night.

After twenty-one days of repeating the above ingredients, I was spent. I saved my Word document a thousand times, compulsively, as I didn’t want to lose a single word. Then I slept. I slept for days. When I arose, my head was free enough to begin the editing process. Some authors outline before they begin to write. I tend to outline once I reach a certain point in the story: a kind of reverse outline, to attempt to protect against major plot holes.

Soup and Salad. Ingredients for editing: a solid week of coffee, a few colorful pens, post it notes, two to three black ink cartridges, two reams of paper and the ability to look at your words without remembering the sweat behind them. I print my work, read over it with a colorful pen in hand to fix errors that can’t be seen on my laptop screen and return to the original document to correct the errors I caught. Once I do this, I print again, pouring over the second draft before finalizing the document.

I wrote soup and salad because the above process is most efficient when repeated. May as well get two dishes out of it.

Before I move on to dessert, I have to say that this is the point of the process when I realized I was going to self-publish. I had the desire to share my work with others immediately. I was proud and excited. I still believe that self-publishing doesn’t signify the end in the publishing world. Today, it opens doors.

Dessert. Cover creation and description. This is tricky. A great chef doesn’t necessarily equate to a brilliant baker. A major force throughout Tuesday Tells it Slant was a diary. I decided to make a cover that mimicked a diary with a casual font and doodles. Make the cover relate to the book. Most readers do judge a book by its cover.

This is also the part of the process where you will create the book’s description. Keep it simple, yet detailed enough to grab a reader’s attention. Don’t be afraid to give away too much. A reader doesn’t need to be surprised at every turn of the page. They need to know enough to hook them before they start reading.

Setting the table with eBooks. Amazon’s Digital Text Platform allows authors to upload their work, cover, and description easily. After uploading, name your price. I priced my work at $0.99 to start. At this price, Amazon pays a royalty rate of 35%, though this figure is flipping to 70% for all eBooks priced at or above $2.99 in June. In as little as twenty-four hours, your work becomes available to Kindle owners for purchasing. As an independent author, you can also utilize Smashwords to make your work available in multiple eFormats (Sony Reader, Barnes and Noble Nook). The royalty rate for authors using Smashwords is 57%. These services are free for authors. There aren’t any set-up fees or gimmicks. They merely make your work available for download.

Proper serving ware. Paperbacks. If you want to serve your readers traditionally, Amazon’s CreateSpace is the way to go. There are no set-up costs involved and the process is fairly simple to make your work available as a paperback on Amazon. Your books are printed as needed. When a reader purchases your book from Amazon, the book is then printed and shipped to that reader. Traditionally, an author would pay thousands of dollars to see their work in print. Using Amazon’s CreateSpace, a copy of your own 400-page book would cost about $4.00. Though CreateSpace offers certain (pricey) services to its authors, these services aren’t required to publish your work.

Serving. Marketing, marketing, marketing. This part of the process comes easily for some. For others, it is the most difficult part of the course of self-publishing. Between press releases, reviews, social marketing and developing a readership, the road to success can be rocky, and it all depends upon the work that you put into it. For eBook sales, I recommend joining online forums dedicated to certain eReaders. The Kindle has multiple forums where authors are welcome to post their book and description. For paperback sales, consider giveaways, blog tours and obtaining reviews from reputable sources. If this seems overwhelming, you should consider hiring a publicist to help build an arsenal of marketing material.

More writers are looking at self-publishing as a viable option to getting their work out there. Currently, fewer publishing houses seem willing to take on a work by an unknown, unproven author. According to Publishers Weekly, over 760,000 titles were self-published in 2009: nearly double the total from 2008. Traditional publishers printed less than 290,000 books in 2009.

With the publishing industry gradually failing to keep up with the times, it seems as if the new game is self-publishing. This leaves more power in the hands of the author, instead of the hands of the publishing houses.

Big THANK YOU to Holly Christine for her guest post. Be sure to check out Holly’s website, http://www.hollychristineonline.com/

and her latest novel Tuesday Tells it Slant.