chapter 23
GO IT ALONE:
WHEN TO SELF-PUBLISH AND PURSUE YOUR UNIQUE VISION

“Be yourself—not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.”

—HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Before I talk about when it’s a good time to self-publish, I first want to explore what it means to be a writer with a unique vision. If you are such a writer, you might at times feel that you are a square peg in a round hole or all alone adrift at sea. At this point we’ve discussed developing a distinct voice and daring to be bold, claiming your skills and doing the good hard work of your chosen craft. Now we’re going to talk about whether it’s time to direct your skills toward self-publishing or to taking a traditional approach.

As a writer (artist!), you have a vision or you are in the process of shaping that vision, but either way you are drawn to write because of some individualized spark inside you. And just because there are many niches and slots into which most writing fits (i.e., sells), that reality does not guarantee that your writing will fit perfectly into one of them. There are always outliers and visionaries who just don’t fit the mold or the times, the culture or the trends. If you are one of these writers, this doesn’t make your writing bad—it makes it singular. It may mean that in order to communicate what you have to say, you can’t rely on the existing infrastructure or the people you have so far relied on for your creative visions.

Let me be clear: I’m not talking about ignoring feedback that helps you improve. Ignoring feedback because the work is scary, hard, or overwhelming and then moaning that no one “gets” you is not being a visionary or an outlier; that’s being timid or entitled. You may be an outlier if you hear over and over again, “Wow, this is really different,” or “I’ve never read anything like this before,” or, my personal favorite, “We just don’t know how to market you.” You may be a writer with a style or vision that is, as they say, ahead of the curve or before its time.

In that case, self-publishing may be a good option for you, because while the gatekeepers in publishing may not know what to do with your work, often readers are not schooled in the same genre niches or trends, and they aren’t worried about any bottom line or profit making. They just want to be entertained and educated. One of the most exciting aspects of self-publishing, which many authors have discovered, is that readers are a lot more forgiving than agents and publishers. Now, that is no reason to put out halfhearted work; readers may be forgiving, but they aren’t stupid. They know when a work isn’t finished or the author didn’t sew up all the threads. They’ll notice if you’ve left in errors or taken shortcuts. But a publisher has wholly different demands to consider, not the least of which is whether or not they can justify making a financial investment in something they have no guarantee for. Big publishers are not known for that level of risk very often, and from a business model standpoint, you can’t blame them. But you aren’t likely writing from a business model standpoint, and if your writing truly falls outside the margins, then you may have entirely different considerations.

SMALL PRESS PUBLISHERS

If you feel that you truly are an outlier—that is to say, once again, you write something that just isn’t in the current zeitgeist of popular subjects or styles—but you have, in fact, done all the work of revision and put a high polish on the manuscript to boot, then there’s another avenue to try before you go the self-publishing route. Small presses, the labors of love of independent businesspeople who are not owned by a Big Publisher but who still follow all the legitimate processes of publishing (i.e., they pay to publish you rather than the other way around), are often hungry for talented, unusual books that the mainstream publishers are overlooking.

They may pay smaller advances, but they often invest an immense amount of personal attention and promotion to each of their authors, and many will take unagented submissions. I always recommend that writers consider these options before moving on to self-publishing.

Some great small presses I admire include:

• DZANC BOOKS: Unusual in the publishing industry, Dzanc Books is a nonprofit organization whose funds from sales of their books go to such endeavors as publishing a monthly online literary journal, The Collagist; providing low-cost writing instruction to beginning and emerging writers by connecting them with professional writers through Creative Writing Sessions; and offering a Writer-in-Residence program.
• PRESS 53: A small press based in North Carolina, Press 53 specializes in short story and poetry collections. They also hold contests annually, awarding a financial prize, plus publication, to the winners.
• ENGINE BOOKS: They are perhaps my favorite small publisher for their mission statement alone: “Big-house publishing is driven by profit. As great presses are bought up by international conglomerates, the profit burden for each title skyrockets. Corporate publishers select and promote books based on potential revenues. The result is a body of relatively ‘safe’ literature by established writers. Big presses still publish many wonderful books, often by first-time writers; they also pass on dozens of books that deserve to be published. Engine Books demands very little profit from its titles. Though each book will be aggressively promoted to offer writers the widest possible exposure, work is selected by the quality of its storytelling and edited with an eye toward enhancing that storytelling.”

  Engine Books publishes only four titles per year, though they aim to expand. They also host an annual novel award, which comes with a cash prize and publication.

HYBRID PRESSES

Hybrid presses meet writers halfway. They may not pay an advance but will pay for either production of or distribution of your book. They may produce your print book while you control your e-book. They may do all the work up front but rely on print-on-demand services to produce your book instead of doing a big up-front print run, which means there’s no chance for returns and no money taken from your royalties. So while you don’t make up-front money, you may not have to fork over money to produce your book, and you’ll benefit from their ability to feature your book in trade catalogs or online bookstores, distribute to brick-and-mortar bookstores in some cases, and even receive traditional reviews.

Examples of hybrid publishers are:

• BOOKTROPE: Booktrope is a hybrid publisher that works like a writer’s collective. You can be accepted only through the referral of a Booktrope author. Booktrope is very interested in self-motivated writers with strong platforms and experience in self-publishing. Once accepted, you then enter “Teamtrope”—a bit like Facebook for Booktrope’s members, where you make a bid to pull together a team, including a book manager, cover designer, and marketing person, who will produce your book from within Booktrope’s community of freelancers. All team members take a small percentage of the royalties from sales of your book, so your whole team is motivated to help you produce the best possible book. Booktrope uses print-on-demand technology, but through Lightning Source your books can be made available to brick-and-mortar bookstores and through all regular online outlets. Authors published with Booktrope have a tougher time qualifying for book reviews in trade publications, such as Kirkus Reviews or Publishers Weekly, though it has been done.
• ENTANGLED PRESS. Solely a romance publisher, Entangled works in a similar way to Booktrope, in that all staff involved in the production of a book have a financial stake in the project and split royalties with authors. As its website says, “We don’t make money unless you make money.” Authors receive royalties on cover sales, can qualify for reviews in major journals, and receive distribution all over the world through MacMillan, one of the largest print distributors in the world.
• SHEBOOKS. Shebooks is a digital-only publisher of 10,000-word e-books written by women. Some authors receive advances up front, while others simply get royalties, depending on negotiations. Shebooks’s team edits, designs your cover, and produces each digital book. They also make the book available through online retailers and their own unique Shebooks app, which, for a monthly fee, allows subscribers unlimited access to all their books.

SELF-PUBLISHING

What’s motivating you to self-publish? It’s important that you identify the difference between self-publishing because what you write doesn’t have an easy or comfortable niche and you want to control the rights to your work, and self-publishing because you’re impatient or in a hurry or you think it requires less work. (Hint: Self-publishing requires about twenty-five times more work than the traditional route for the writer-publisher.)

As markets narrow and publishers take fewer risks on debut authors, and as technology improves and more people have access to better digital publishing tools, there has never been a better or easier time to self-publish. And by “easier” I mean that all the tools are at your disposal and are more sophisticated and user-friendly than ever before. It is still an enormous time commitment and financial investment to self-publish, regardless of how you do it.

To determine whether you are ready to self-publish successfully, consider the following checklist. You are ready to self-publish only when you’ve taken the following steps.

• You’ve had your book developmentally edited.
• You’ve had your book copy edited.
• You’ve decided on your top seven search-engine optimized keywords.
• You have worked those keywords into your concise, sexy “jacket copy.” (This is a paragraph that will both go on your book jacket and also be used to promote it.)
• You’ve decided what you want your publishing “enterprise” to be called. (Self-publishing services will want to know.)
• You’ve obtained a Library of Congress Number. (To get one, go to authoru.org/authors-how-to-get-your-lccn-library-of-congress-number.html.)
• You’ve decided on a publishing service to use (e.g., CreateSpace, Lulu, BookBaby, Lightning Source).
• You’ve either bought a separate package of ISBN numbers from Bowker or used the free one provided by Amazon or Smashwords. (Each version of your book, e-pub and print, has its own number.)
• You have created a title page that includes publisher info and possibly a “the people and places in this book are fictional” disclaimer. (Feel free to borrow from what you see in other books. Also put your ISBN and Library of Congress numbers here.)
• You have hired a cover designer. (You need not just a front cover but a “full wrap.” That is, this design must include the spine, back cover, and front cover. The back cover should have room for a bar code and ISBN number as well as your jacket copy.)
• You have determined the template size of your book based on whichever service you use. (Decide on a “trim” and book size. You will need to give that info to your formatter.)
• You have selected a book formatter for print and electronic files. (You will receive several files: MOBI for Kindle, ePub for Kobo and iBooks, a Word document for Smashwords, and a PDF for print files.)
• You have created a website, either by hiring someone or using a simple, free Wordpress template.
• You have activated a Twitter account (and then engaged, organically, with your followers).
• You have made a Facebook author page (and fostered, grown, and maintained it).
• You have created accounts and uploaded files to all sites you wish to sell on.

Are you tired yet? That’s just the nuts and bolts. After your book is ready for publication, you must think about marketing, a subject on which there are numerous books and resources available at the click of your mouse. Marketing is a far more creative, tricky, and imperfect animal than all that comes before. There are inexpensive advertising sites, programs like Goodreads giveaways, blog tours, and publicists for hire. As much as I’d like to walk you through the steps here, marketing is so specific to your genre that no one-size-fits-all plan exists. I do, however, recommend Joel Friedlander’s website, TheBookDesigner.com, for a host of resources.

Self-publishing is not for the faint of heart. That said, there are still a ton of good reasons to do it, and here are a few.

• You keep creative control and reap all the “profits” (assuming there are any).
• You can upload revisions and change covers, titles, or anything else about your book at anytime and won’t have to argue with a publisher to do so.
• You can track your own sales, which helps with marketing.
• You can use social media to help you sell.
• Selling online means you don’t have to sell in brick-and-mortar bookstores, which are decreasing in number now that more people purchase their books online than ever before, and which are notoriously difficult to place self-published books in anyway.
• You can control the publication date and timing of your book.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the other end of the equation.

• You must do all the work or have the financial resources to hire the right people to do the work for you.
• You don’t get any money up front for your finished work. No one will pay you an advance (unless you get your money from crowdfunding).
• There’s no guarantee that anyone will find or buy your book.
• No one will pay you back for any losses.
• It’s difficult to get inexpensive distribution, and depending on your production company, some physical and online bookstores won’t carry you.
• It’s difficult to get your book reviewed by traditional review sources such as Kirkus or Publishers Weekly without paying for it. (And if you do pay for it, there’s no guarantee of a positive review.)

At the end of the day, however, you might say the risks for traditional publishing and self-publishing aren’t so different. Traditional publishing tends to have vastly better distribution, reputation, and marketing power, but that doesn’t guarantee a book’s success. I can tell you many sob stories of traditionally published authors whose books did not earn out their advances, whose publishers invested very little marketing funds, and whose books thus flopped.

Self-publishing has to be worth it to you, just as your writing practice has to be worth it to you, for the love of the art, for the desire to put your words into people’s hands. Just like any other part of the process, if you don’t take pleasure in this part of the journey, self-publishing will be a long grind and a disappointment. You love your writing practice, remember? You have committed to yourself. Don’t put yourself in a situation that will cause you to fall out of love with it. If self-publishing seems like too much right now, give it time. Go slowly, and keep trying the mainstream channels.

WORK IT

Now that you have an honest view of what it takes to self-publish, make yourself a pros-and-cons sheet. If you think you’re up to the task, create a time line for yourself with the awareness that many of the tasks, from copy editing to formatting, require weeks if not months. You are most likely to have success at self-publishing if you create a business plan and a six- to twelve-month time line for your first book. (The time line can get shorter with subsequent books, but you need to be realistic your first time through.) Start investigating marketing plans now. Get your team in place.

PERSISTENCE IS PERSONAL

Going It Alone

Hugh Howey, best-selling author of Wool and many others

You’ve written your masterpiece. You’ve workshopped it with a writing group. Friends and family and even a few strangers have told you that this is a great work and worthy of publication. And then a pile of rejection letters from literary agents tell you that it’s not right for them.

But maybe it’s right for readers.

The decision to self-publish isn’t easy. In fact, it can be agonizing. The first novel I ever wrote was published with a small paying press. When I got my contract for book two, I faced a painful decision. Should I stick with someone who would pay me a little but then own my work and have complete control of it? Or did I want to see how far I could take it on my own?

After much internal debate and many conversations with loved ones, I decided to maintain ownership of my hard work and go it alone. The tools and platforms that allowed me to control my own destiny had finally matured and opened up. Self-publishing today is an extremely valid path for launching a writing career. That doesn’t mean there are any guarantees or that luck won’t play a huge role; it just means you don’t have to get stuck with zero chance. You can improve your odds.

Not publishing your book will have predictable results. So will publishing your work poorly. But here’s something else to consider: Submitting your work to an agent in rough-draft form will lead to rejection as well. These days, many aspiring writers are paying to have their work professionally edited before they query agents. The same seriousness should apply however you decide to publish.

Think of self-publishing like starting up a band. You’ve got the skills to play an instrument, and now you’re going to try to turn this into a paying career. You start on street corners with an open guitar case. You move up to small gigs in bars. You play on your first stage. You hope to build a following and maybe attract attention from a recording studio.

Writing now provides the same path to success. It means long hours and complete dedication. Most writers will give up before they master their craft, just as most musicians will never play through bleeding fingers and develop the callouses they need. But if you are part of the fraction of a single percent who will persist, who will write ten novels before they care how their sales are doing, you have a chance. Most won’t do this.

Before you publish, consider the investment in time you made in writing your work. Now consider investing some money. Not in a company that will scam you, but in creating a beautiful work you will own for the rest of your life. It can be difficult to hear that you should spend $1,000 editing your work and buying stellar cover art, but there are two ways to think about this that might help.

The first is that this isn’t an expensive hobby. People spend far more on whatever they fancy doing in their spare time. The difference with your book is that it can earn some of that money back. Maybe all of it. Maybe even more.

The second way to look at this is as though you’re starting a small business. This book will be for sale for the rest of your life. For the e-book version, you won’t have to spend a penny to create more copies of this work. It could be ten years from now that it begins to pay off. What other small business can you start for such a low investment and with such long-term benefits? I can’t think of a single one.

Whether you view your writing as a hobby or as a potential career, the initial investment is crucial. Put a jar on your desk, and add a dollar for every hundred words you write. That might be five dollars a day, which means giving up a coffee or even your cable television. Watch the words and that fund build together. Let it motivate you to get through to the end. And when you decide that self-publishing is right for you, invest in your work in order to invest in yourself.

Then do it all over again.