Greetings! I’ve been away for a long time again. Between a really bad issue with my neck that hurt even just to turn my head, to a pandemic and riots. It’s been a crazy year so far. I know we all are going through rough and uncertain times that can be life changing. My heart goes out to you all. We can get through this!
Through all of that, I’m back again and want to chat about self publishing and getting to the point of deciding to do it. Over the years I’ve written two books, my first that needs serious work, and my second that I’ve been working towards getting published, Rise of the Winged Assassin. At the risk of dating myself, I started writing back when there were no digital options for reading and your only way to get a book was at the regular book store, a half price bargain book store or to check it out at the library. If your book made it to the shelves it was deemed worthy of publishing. Anything else was amateur.
Over time we began to see books that were self-published. Many of them contained great stories but major publishing houses didn’t feel they could make money off of them, or perhaps they felt the writing wasn’t ready yet for prime time. During writing group meetings if anyone mentioned self-publishing eyes would go wide and you’d get the speech about how you just have to keep working hard and don’t give up by self publishing. That’s for writers who aren’t good enough.
Today we live in the land of digital books and digital readers with so many great self-published books that can be found on sites like Amazon. Many times those books aren’t on the shelves of the brick and mortar stores but there are so many people who have adapted to reading on a tablet that this isn’t a big issue anymore. My husband is an avid reader of free books that have been self-published and the stories have been great. He’s willing to ignore bad grammar and spelling errors to enjoy a great plot and story line. I think this is true now for many of us. Those great stories that had been kept from us are now out there for all to enjoy.
With all of this said, there was time when I believed that my books weren’t good enough to be published because I believed all the baloney I was hearing. I tried hard to get accepted by an agent and was turned down. To me that meant that my book wasn’t good enough and I was crushed. Now with all of the self-publishing options out there I’ve changed my mind. Our options now are you can edit and format on your own then upload your books directly to sites like Amazon, you can go traditional and try to get an agent, or you can try a hybrid approach. I decided on the hybrid and will be publishing my book through Page Publishing Inc. There will be more posts coming on my journey with them soon and why I chose this approach.
In the end I decided what was important to me and that is to share Lorelei’s journey with everyone who is interested. Don’t listen to all the baloney. Listen to your heart and make your dreams come true.
This is a great quote and so true!
