Authors: Have you ever self-published?

[Mike03]

I was worried that I might have writer's block, since I have been so uninspired, unmotivated for about two years now. Today I was listening to the radio and heard a short report on the growing popularity of self-publishing. Then I realized, I am not sick of writing; I'm sick of finding a publisher. I am sick of agents. I'm sick of sending out dozens of queries and chapters, followed by dozens of rejection letters, or promises to publish my work that either don't pan our, are rejected by one member of a twelve-person committee, or requests that I cut a manuscript in half or re-arrange this, edit that, etc...

Writing is great. Selling and pleasing editors exhausts me.

What if any experience have you had by electing to go the self-publishing route? Commercial publishing houses are becoming an extinct species anyway, as the internet consumes that industry. Call me old fashion, but I still like books and would like to put my words on paper rather than disperse them into the ether of bandwidth.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

1. Sort of...

...I'm publishing articles on eZineArticles.com.

My intention is to build up a stash there, then use it as a portfolio for the local papers and business journals.

Then I will take THAT stash and shop it around to publications that actually pay something.

You're 100% right...traditional publishing, as most people know it, is dead.

The "anthrax scares" killed a bit of it, but so did the proliferation of blogs, etc.

I don't let the lack of sales potential slow me down.

Writers write. They have no choice. Write long enough and compellingly enough and there might be some money in it.

As Stephen King once said, writers who write for money are monkeys. Writers who write because they are writers ARE writers.

(It was in his forward to Skeleton Key, and I consider it required reading for any writer).

:toast:

[Mike03]

5. "Writers write. They have no choice."

Exactly. That is the way I've been my entire life (or at least since I was twelve).

I agree: I never ever wrote for money, but I did want to be read. That was my only goal.

Your plan of assembling a portfolio sounds like a very good one.

Best of luck, and thanks for your comments!

[pitohui]

8. king wasn't talking about business journals

the way to get into business journals isn't to give your work away things for free, it's to get out there, get credentials, get work with a local newspaper, and start marketing the hell out of yourself...FOR MONEY...because how can you write about business when you can't even manage your OWN business

here's what i'm talking about: one writer in my circle started with the local fishwrapper as a reporter for their business section, made plenty of business connections, wrote biographies (puff pieces) on commissions for various CEOs, and then retired around age 35 with his ill-gotten gains and moved away from new orleans -- at which point i lost track of him...but you notice the key point in all of this? he wrote for money -- he couldn't have been taken seriously by fortune or forbes or other business journals he eventually wrote for if he didn't, clips from some free shopping rag would have been worse than useless and only good for giving a prospective editor a chuckle

there is nothing wrong in writing for the money and in some markets you won't be respected if you sell yourself cheap or free -- unless the reason you're writing cheap/free is self promotion (the vet donating his advice to a pet care magazine, the dentist donating his advice to a local lifestyle how to shop magazine, and so forth)

publishers know what the self publishing and vanity presses are, and they know what the non-paid markets are, and in the field you're talking about, and a clip from some local "how to shop" is not of the same quality as a clip from a national business or trade journal


write long enough and compelling enough for free and one day pie in the sky when you die you might get paid is TERRIBLE advice for the nonfiction writer, you need to get out there swinging right now, and if it's a shitty newspaper job, it's still a paid job and gives you more cred and contacts than writing for nothing

as for fiction markets, it's a closed market today, what you need to do there is to get involved in a respected workshop or MFA program, so that other writers can learn about your work and give you the references needed to be read by a publisher, all the clips in the world won't make any difference if you don't take that step, king broke in during a different era when publishers were still open to over the transom submissions, now even agents won't take on an unknown that way

if you write just to write and don't care about being paid, just write a blog and don't be a scab who helps pull down the pay of the writers out there who do like to eat, one of the reasons i go sick of being a writer is this attitude that we should live on the same pay that we got in 1972 -- or, increasingly, you see people who are happy to live on nothing at all (spousal or parental welfare) which doesn't just hurt themselves, it hurts the pay of all writers who DON'T happen to be stephen king

[Oeditpus Rex]

9. Stephen King can go fuck himself

Writing is work, and anyone who gives it away is a sucker.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

10. In Silicon Valley, it's all fallout from the dot com thing...

...there were MANY stories of people who gave their best to start-ups on the promise of stock options once the company "made it."

Most of the companies who took on those free workers NEVER "made it."

Their founders "made it" out the back door with a golden parachute, and the office furniture went into liquidation sales.

Silicon Valley is one long repetition of ass-f**k after ass-f**k.

In terms of the culture and climate, there are things that no other place on earth has to offer.

In terms of the kind of people who live here, it's a 24 hour a day Jeff Stryker film.

[DarkTirade]

2. My mother self-published

but as she uses a pen name for reasons of personal safety (she wrote a tall-all book about a rather cultish pyramic scheme), I can't point you to her website or anything.

She sells mostly online, and one of the big things for her as that she's networked with a lot of other websites on the same topic, and they all link back and forth and have links to buy many books on that topic, including ones written by other people. That way people with an interest in one book on the subject might find hers and buy that too.

[Mike03]

6. Interesting--Thank you!

I would like to write under a pseudonym myself, especially one of my books which is about an actual person.

[lost-in-nj]

3. HI

how are you????

What kind of books do you write??
I don't know anything about publishing or writing...
I do like to read though!! :)

:hi:

everything going ok??


lost

[Mike03]

7. Hey, Lost-In-NJ,

Thanks for saying "Hello." Hope you are doing well!

Yes, everything is going pretty well. (I'm just a bit worried about my father and mother, but that's another story).

To make a long story short, for about ten years I wrote mostly screenplays and lived in Hollywood. But my great passion was always the novel, and I wrote a number of those, two of which were rejected at the last moment by a good publisher (damn them!) because they were too violent or for some reason that was not told to me. I went through a number of agents, the last one of whom I fired myself, and vowed that I would never have another agent.

Then I took a brief detour into the world of writing non-fiction, and collaborated with a business tycoon on a book. I also did ghost writing on screenplays. I wrote a third novel, which some people felt was my best to that point, but my contact at the publisher (an editor) retired just as I was sending it through.

My last experience was with a 1,000 page non-fic analysis of a movie director, which was preliminarily accepted by a number of publishing houses, but ultimately rejected for its length. I had wrestled with this for about five years and could not bear to reduce it to 300 pages. I did manage to cut it to 500, but that was not good enough.

Two years ago I completed a novel that I really love, but I have not shown it to anyone (other than close friends).

I also wrote essays for a popular website devoted to the analysis of cinema.

We'll see what the future holds. I'm getting fascinated by medicine and the risk factors for chronic illness. Maybe I should do a website or something about that.

But luckily I have other passions. I produced a low budget film and I love investing and business and researching scientific topics.

[pitohui]

4. no for me it would be stupid, i wrote for money

in my case i can guarantee you that it's possible to get sick of writing as well as marketing, but i wrote to a market and mainly what i was assigned, so maybe that's why -- i agree with you that marketing one's work is a bore and no fun unless you are naturally a self-promoting person! especially considering that there are really no open markets left unless you're married to or sleeping with or the offspring of someone

i know a man who self published a novel and the couple thousand dollars he made from the novel is definitely dwarfed by the money lost because now the novel is not publishable thru a conventional publisher -- also an issue is that MOST self published novels are money losers and to the best of my knowledge for this person to make even that much money on the novel is exceptional -- you need to ask yourself if there is any realistic way for you to market your self published work, because there probably isn't -- in the late 90s, very early 2000s i noticed our local paper fell for it a few times and accidentally reported on self published novels without realize they were self published but they've figured it out by now

reviews and bookstores know what the self publishing presses are