Gemini Rising

Random thoughts on self publishing & other stuff

Lots of stuff DIY deadline is coming up...


Well, I've got a couple of thoughts to hash out here - haha - the first one is the DIY book festival is coming up in Hollywood, CA and the deadline to enter is 25 SEP. If you've got a book that meets the qualifications send it in. It's my year participating - I'm sending in "The Wolf's Torment." Wish me luck.

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Donald Maas Interview.

Donald Maas is a literary agent who isn't afraid to work with new novelists. Here's a link to a recent interview:

http://www.maassagency.com/lookfor.html

He says: Your success isn't up to the publisher it's up to you, the novelist and the fiction you create.

I think he has a point in the fact that it is about the fiction you create. You've got to draft a good story. That said, I can't emphasis enough how much I learned working with IUniverse and the editorial evaluation process. My novel wasn't ready after the 1st working draft. I felt like it was, but it wasn't. It needed a good set of objective eyes on it to point out things I could be doing better. I must have went through 4 drafts after that to get the book ready to be published so the lesson I learned was that writing is 10 percent writing and 90 percent editing. Edit, edit, edit. Trust me on this.

Maas goes to say the hardest thing is finding great authors. Writing is truly a craft in that regard. I think to get better at writing you've got keep writing and improving on what you've learned. Does anyone have any I worked hard stories they'd like to share?

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Self publishing

I've probably written a ton of stuff on why I like to self publish, but I just saw Jessica's blog over at BookEnds. She's a literary agent over there and had some thoughts about it, saying basically, that you have to evaluate your goal on why you want to self publish because there are some big downsides. If you just want to get your book into the hands of family & friends, self publish. If you want to make money and be taken seriously, go the more traditional route.

I would say that about 5-7 years ago, yeah, that was definately a stigma. Now, I think the lines are blurring. One thing I've noticed over the years is that readers don't pay much attention to how a book was published, if they read a book they like, tradtional or self-published, they're going to recommend it.

Marketing is so important in the self publishing field. You've got to have a budget to it, and you've got to be committedto it and you've got to have patience. If you don't have those three things than there's a good chance you're not going to sell books like you'd want to. While I do want to go on and write more, I've set aside one day a week to try and just work on the marketing aspects of my books. It's all I can really afford timewise, but it helps. Anyone have any marketing tips they can share?

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On the personal side of the house, if I'm not on the computer, I'm consumed by housework and then it's time to go to work. Joseph's 1st birthday is coming up and we're celebrating on 22 Sep enough he was born on 20 Sep. I can't believe how big he's gotten. He loves Elmo's World. I tried out the Telebubbies on him, but I don't think he's ready for them yet. Haha.

((hugs)) Steph