Self-Publishing 101

Just to be clear, self-publishing is neither easy, nor cheap, nor fast.

I’ve been waiting to start this post, which I’ve turned into a Page (link at the bottom) for all aspiring authors, because I feel I’m in a fairly unique situation. I’ve not only published with an established house (two books), but also self-published (one book). I’ve published non-fiction, fiction, short stories, and magazine & newspaper articles.

There are tons of sites out there that have lots of links to self-publishing houses and How to Succeed! You Can Do It! Click Here to Submit Your Soon-to-Be Bestseller!!! manuals. I’m not here for that. I’m here to point out the pitfalls so that you, the future published writer, can hopefully avoid some of them.

The short version for me goes like this:

Writing time of novel (including editing) – 7 years

Publication time – 3 months

Total cost – $3,700 {$1,300 (CreateSpace fee), $400 (bookmarks), $500 (launch party expenses), $1,500 (promotional/distribution/advertising fees, all done personally and not through CreateSpace)}

Level of contentment with the process – Mostly positive, but the IRS is my new sworn enemy (more on that in the Page for this Post)

Would I do it again? Probably not, but that’s because I’m trying to launch a career as a novelist with an agent and need to get some exposure before approaching one. If you’re only in it for the money or for the experience or for posterity’s sake, then by all means it could be a career for you! It’s a lot of work, though. It’s a lot of migraine-inducing experiences with people at so many levels, from the publishing house to the distributor to Kindle to Amazon to individual bookstores to local stores for promotional purposes to the American government to a graphic designer to a printer to your accountant to your stupid Russian Blue cat because he won’t get the hell off your desk before mistakenly hitting the ERASE ALL FOREVER key on your laptop, etc.

Click here to read the SELF-PUBLISHING PAGE in its entirety.