So, welcome to my first “Ask the Author” blog post. I’ll probably be doing these every other Friday unless something exciting happens (and until I run out of submitted questions).
(Speaking of which, please feel free to comment with questions for future posts.)
This week’s question comes from Kari at Inspiration Cauldron.
“You’re publishing your novel independently, aren’t you? How is that going?”
Yes, I do publish independently. Both Song and Sword and Sanguine have been self published and the current plan is for future projects to be released the same way. Having never published through a company I can’t really compare the two, but I do know that I get complete control over my work (and therefore have to take complete responsibility for it).
I also hold all rights to it, can price it as I see fit, use it in giveaways, etc.
As to how it’s going…
It would be going better if I didn’t suck at marketing my own stuff. But then, from what I’ve seen and read and heard through the grapevine, even if you publish via a more traditional route it seems that you have to do a lot of your own marketing, so, yeah, that would be about the same, I think.
Although, if you’re published through an actual publishing house, there’s a layer of… respectability? authenticity?… that seems to be lacking if you’re self-published, so there’s that.
Other than marketing, I think the hardest part (for me) is finding a cover artist to work with. I did the cover for Sanguine myself (and it shows) but I’m not 100% in love with the one for Song and Sword, either. I think when I get the sequels (and the prequel) ready for publishing I might get a revamped cover for it. Ditto for when I do the sequel to Sanguine (which might happen next November).
Okay, I’m not a fan of formatting the book, either. Granted, that’s a step-by-step process and both Amazon and Smashwords have great step-by-step walk throughs, but for some reason it makes me insanely nervous, and I pretty much save the file under a different name for every step of the process.
I don’t enjoy the endless rounds of revisions, either, but I think you’d get that with a traditional publisher too? I know that Daelyn Morgana did when she had a short story submitted to an anthology.
And at least I don’t have deadlines!
On the other hand, deadlines might be a good thing to keep me focused on one project at a time so that I don’t have so many half-finished novels sitting around.
But on the other hand, I get to work on whatever appeals to me at the moment.
So, all in all, I think I’m happy with self-publishing.
Except for that marketing stuff, and there will be more about that in two weeks.
Novel Notes 