Why I Self-Publish

When I started writing my first book close to twenty years ago, the only self-publishing done to my knowledge was with vanity presses. Until I subscribed to Writers Digest, I’d never heard of them. I saw their ads in the magazine, then unsolicited; I started getting the promotional ads for vanity presses mailed to me.  I saved a few of those, but wasn’t really interested in paying to get published. Somehow it didn’t seem right to pay someone for the work I’d done. So when I finished my book I went the route of trying to get an agent – the route most writers were taking, but every time I got a rejection instead of sending out multiple more query letters like other writers did, I’d get discouraged and not query again for months, although I kept working on the second book in the series. Of course, at that time I was a full time teacher so my time was limited, too. It’s more than an eight hour a day job when one considers I spent almost every evening and much of my weekends grading papers or making lesson plans.

This was in images for self-published books.

In 2007, I went to Malice Domestic, the first mystery conference I’d ever attended. It was there I found Sisters-in-Crime and the sub-group, the Guppies and joined them. It was the best thing I’d ever done for myself as a writer. I remember going on-line a few days after I got home and finding over 200 messages in my in-box from the Guppies. Panic time! I had no online groups before and wasn’t on Facebook – not sure there even was a Facebook then. However, I learned I could get those messages in digest form and that helped. It was from the Guppies that eventually I learned about self-publishing. I think the Guppy Susan Schreyer was one of the first guppies, if not the first, who went that route, and she became my mentor back in 2012 when I published my first book, The Blue Rose, through Create Space and Smashwords.

Until I heard that Beatrix Potter self-published her first book, I wasn’t aware of how many writers for years have been self-publishing. Benjamin Franklin published his own work in the early to mid-1700’s. Of course, he was a printer so it was easy for him. Thomas Paine published his work in the 1700’s. In the 1800’s Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Oscar Wilde, and others self-published. In the 1900’s there was Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, Upton Sinclair, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, D.H. Lawrence, e.e. cummings.

This doesn’t include the whole list of authors, who self-published by any means. In fact, many of these literary giants self-published for the same reason that many writers are doing it today: to combat censorship, maintain control, and most commonly like for me, to end rejections.

In the early 1900’s, James Joyce’s seminal work, Ulysses, was faced with rejection from publishers due to page length and obscenity laws. He collected money from friends, patrons and fellow writers for pre-orders.

D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover was ‘privately published’ thirty-two years before its official publication in Britain, because it was too sexy and with too many dirty words.

Mark Twain got tired of finicky publishers and paid for the publication of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn himself.

Zane Gray borrowed money from his wife to launch his book career as the father of the modern western novel. It helped that he married a woman with money.

In 1644, John Milton self-published Areopagitica, a polemical tract arguing in favor of unlicensed printing, saying, “he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.”

There is still some stigma with self-publishing as if maybe our books aren’t good enough to be traditionally published. Also, large book stores won’t carry our books because any that don’t sell, can’t be returned. Few libraries will buy them, so unless you donate your books to local libraries, which I do, your access to readers is limited. We must do our own promotion, although from all I hear now, even traditionally published books aren’t promoting the books like they once did. And like at Malice, self-published books aren’t eligible for being nominated for awards. Publishers edit the books – or so I’ve heard. The truth is I’m not sure how good a job they do because it’s a rare traditionally published book I read that doesn’t have at least a few typos. I have three beta readers and still go over my books again before I publish them, but still there might be a few typos or repeat words in my books, too.

The fourth book in my series.

The perks of self-publishing are I can write a book with more pages than many publishers want. I can get my books out as soon as I finish them – no deadlines or only having them coming out just once a year as some publishers require. I don’t feel any pressure except from the fans I now have who as soon as they finish reading one book, start wanting the next one right away, but that’s a nice pressure. I don’t have to pay an agent or have a publisher taking a commission, and I don’t have to worry about a publisher dropping me if I don’t sell enough books. There’s just the cost of the books from Create Space. I still get two-thirds of the price of my books when they’re sold instead of the small amount writers get from their publisher after they and the agent get their share. Less if I sell them through small book stores who take a commission, too. I have to pay for my cover, but I have control over that cover. My cover artist listens to what I want and comes up with awesome covers that I love. Of course, I’m lucky that my step-granddaughter is a graphic artist, but I still pay her for her work.

The fifth book in my series.

Was it hard for me to publish it? Since I’m not terribly tech savvy, I paid a young man in my local writers group to put it up for me after I followed all the rules for how it had to be formatted. That was easy because they’re easy to find on line. He had self-published a book of poetry before. I watched him and after he put up my first two books, I went ahead and did the rest of mine with no problem. There was a problem with the printing of my fourth book, but that was the printer’s problem and Create Space when contacted, immediately sent me a corrected order free of charge. I’ve been getting checks at least twice a year for both the print books and for the e-books. My granddaughter makes a front, back and the spine for the print book. She also makes an e-book cover. My covers were the first for her, but she found out how and the covers are admired by everyone. Create Space turns your print book into a Kindle version if you agree not to go with an e-book at any other venue for 90 days. Will I ever become a big name author making tons of money? No! But I am getting money, and I’m told the more books I get out, the more fans I’ll get and thus more money. But money has never been as much of an issue as the joy of writing and creating my own little fictional town as well as the characters populating my town, and getting readers who also have fallen in love with Portage Falls and the characters living there.

Once you have a book published, laughter comes easy.

If you’re a writer do you or have you self-published?

If not, have you considered doing it?