You will recall that my last blog briefly explored the complicated path that all writers have to tread when it comes to having their work published in what most people would call the ‘traditional’ process (ie) approaching a publisher to see if they would be interested in publishing your work.
It is, in an increasingly competitive market, becoming a more and more challenging process. If writing was a game of poker, the publishers would, and collectively, be holding a Royal Flush whilst the writer might, at best, be sat there looking at a One or Two pair or, at best, Three Of A Kind.
So it’s not so much about the hand that you have been dealt as the way you play it.
Plus, of course, how tenaciously committed you are to your project. JK Rowling was, after all, rejected by twelve different publishers before, eventually, Bloomsbury gave her books about a teenage wizard an opportunity, an act of faith of their part which yielded rich results for all.
But what if she had given up after her fifth, sixth or tenth attempt?
Then there’d be no Harry Potter, JK Rowling or any of the infinite spin offs that resulted as a consequence of this modern day publishing phenomena.
You, of course, may not have such patience.
You may think that you have written your book and that you want to see your hard work rewarded.
Without having to send a synopsis off to several publishers in the hope that they might just deign to reply to you six to eight months down the line to say its ‘…on their reading pile’ (which is, believe me, something of a result, so take heart if that happens) or, worse case scenario, they’re ‘…not looking for this kind of work at the present time’.
Don’t take quite so much heart from that, as its publisher talk for ‘…we haven’t read it and the manuscript has been shredded’.
So why not self publish?
If you’d have suggested that you were thinking of doing that even a decade or so ago then you might have had something of a negative response from most people in the industry-including your fellow writers.
‘Vanity Publishing’ was the term being tossed around at the time, the thought that you reckoned that your book was so important to the world, it just had to be published.
People just didn’t like the fact that the writer had circumvented all the usual challenges betwixt them and a book, challenges that they had met and, for the most part, beaten off.
It was, for me, an attitude that smacked of several things, none of them good. Including jealousy, snobbishness and a sense of not wanting too many people to enter their gilded lily of a world.
Fortunately the attitude today has changed and self publishing is regarded as a very serious and respected option for any writer, with a number of publishers now keen to work with writers on their projects, some of whom you will find out more about if you work with me and choose to go down that route.
The immediate advantages are obvious. You are guaranteed a book of course that you have full editorial control over.
Plus, if you order 100 copies at £19.99 each and sell them yourself, then you get to keep every penny-less, of course, the costs you will have paid out to publish the book and have the print run in the first place but for all that, don’t worry, you’ll still have made a healthy profit if you sell all of those books.
You’ll have to put in a lot of work.
When it comes to marketing, publicity and book launches that’s all covered by your publisher if your book is commissioned and published in that way.
If you self publish, then the onus is on you to do all of that.
As well as getting your book into the shops-and you may find that most of them will only accept a half dozen or so to start with and on a sale or return basis.
But think on. You’ve written a book. It’s been published. It’s going to appear in bookshops.
You’ve arrived. You’re a published writer.
The hard work begins now…
