I am high as a kite right now.
And no, I don’t mean on some kind of illegal substance (I only had ONE Three Musketeers bar, thank you very much).
It’s kind of like the writer’s version of a runner’s high. The end of a long and arduous race. Last night, I clicked “PUBLISH” on my latest book, Riven. Now I’m riding the new release buzz and succumbing to the Refresh Sickness where I watch the numbers and tell whoever will listen, “People are buying!”
No matter how many times I’ve done this, it never gets old.
I love self-publishing. Or being, as Chuck Wendig calls it, an Author-Publisher. I love it for the sense of accomplishment, for the fact that I get to see a project from conception to birth to released into the wild. I love it for the same reasons I love a good home improvement project, knowing that I did that with my own two hands and brain, and it’s awesome! For me, that sense of achievement is absolutely unparalleled.
I don’t get that at my Evil Day Job. Because EDJ is just a job. It pays the bills and I’m invested only insofar as I do a good job because that’s who I am. But I don’t love it. It’s not personal.
Being an Author-Publisher is personal.
It means you have all the control. You pick the concepts and control the vision. You pick whether or not to keep your little darlings (and you darn well better be picking the professional editors who will tell you when that’s a BAD IDEA). You pick the cover art (and if you’ve got the sense God gave a goose, you’ll hire out a professional to make it for you unless that’s something you have professional aptitude with yourself). You pick the back blurb. You pick the sales venues. You pick the price point (and change it at will). And you reap all the benefits.
You also have all the responsibility. For quality control. For marketing. For formatting (repeat after me: Formatting is not hard!). All those decisions that contribute to your book being a success or a flop is on your shoulders. And, frankly, that’s a responsibility that sits comfortably on mine. I have a deep and abiding hatred of group projects. I saw an internet meme somewhere that said “All I ever learned from group projects in school is that I hate people.” Yeah. That. Because I was the straight A student that always got stuck with the slackers who didn’t care about their grades, so I did all the work to KEEP my A. Being an Author-Publisher is like that. No one can possibly care as much about your book baby as you, and no one will ever work as hard as you will to make it succeed.
So I can hear you asking the question: If you love it so much, why do you have an agent, and why are you still pursuing traditional publishing?
It’s a good question, one I’ll take in two parts.
I have an agent (the Magnificent Laurie McLean) because I self-published. I wasn’t looking for one. I never wrote a query (please hold off on the rotten tomatoes!). I was on Kristen Lamb’s blog responding to comments about self-publishing and explaining to folks how it worked. This was in the early days, before everybody and their brother had hung out a shingle and a blog saying “Do it this way!” Apparently I managed to conduct myself with sufficient professionalism and business sense that I impressed Laurie. So, of course, she promptly internet stalked me via the wide social media platform I’d created, read all my readily available work, and contacted me for representation.
As a writer, I am not often speechless, but I’m pretty sure my response to all that was a great, big, incoherent SQUEEE!
Laurie is, as her agency’s name would suggest, a forward thinking woman, who has her finger on the rapidly changing pulse of publishing. She knew self-publishing was here to stay and she wanted me to come along for the ride to explore the idea of being a hybrid author. My goal—aside from quitting the Evil Day Job—is to get my work out for people to read. Being a hybrid author is the absolute best means of doing that.
Legacy publishing can be an incredibly powerful machine. When they put their might behind an author, chances of commercial success are much greater than can typically be achieved by chance. But legacy publishing is also incredibly SLOW. Fans have to wait a very long time between releases. And there are some things authors may want to do that New York just doesn’t dig—books that don’t cleanly fit a particular genre, books that are a weird length, serial fiction. And that’s where self publishing picks up the slack.
There are no rules in self publishing. It’s the Wild, Wild West out here. You can try anything you like. Experiment with covers, with different blurbs, with genre mashups, with unusual lengths, with price points and giving stuff away for free (in my experience, not a great idea unless you have follow up stuff that isn’t free). Self publishing is the great proving ground, where if you build it and can prove they will come, you can make New York sit up and take notice. And that, dear readers, means that for the first time since Gutenberg, the authors have the power. They have choices and options.
And that’s why I’m an Author-Publisher who still wants a traditional deal.
Viva la hybrid!
~*~
Kait Nolan is stuck in an office all day, sometimes juggling all three of her jobs at once with the skill of a trained bear—sometimes with a similar temperament. After hours, she uses her powers for good, creating escapist fiction. The work of this Mississippi native is packed with action, romance, and the kinds of imaginative paranormal creatures you’d want to sweep you off your feet…or eat your boss. When she’s not working or writing, she’s in her kitchen, heading up a revolution to Retake Homemade from her cooking blog, Pots and Plots. She’s always busy, so she decided to start A Round of Words in 80 Days as a writing challenge that fit her busy schedule. You can catch up with her at her blog, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and Pots and Plots.
Kait writes action-packed paranormal romance for teens and adults. Her latest release, Riven is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords. iBooks, Kobo, Diesel, and Sony are coming soon.
