Must Publish!

April 2017 Blog

This is the fourth month in a row I'm posting my blog on time. I'm on a roll!

Must Publish!

I was able to write outside today. My session started out cold and windy, but about halfway through, the sun came out and I finished in relative warmth.

Must Publish! A Haiku

I'd share my thoughts with

The world, to the pleasure of

Some, bane of others.

I'm actually still on track with my mantra for the year:

Must Write! Must Edit! Must Publish! Must Promote!

And this month's post is "Must Publish!"

Publish or Perish! It's ever been the rage in academia and is a great admonition for all authors. It goes along with "Don't hide your light under a bushel basket!"

Truth is, authors must publish to be widely remembered, and who among us does not wish to be remembered or at least have our words live beyond us?

"Traditional" publishing, where you submit your work to an agent or a publishing house directly, has been joined (and some may say even surpassed) by self-publishing through one or more of the capable publishing platforms on the internet.

I would have stuck to submitting the traditional way, were I a whole lot younger and had not nearly died from heart failure a couple of years back. There's a certain amount of validation having someone else believe in your work and actually paying you for the privilege of being able to publish it. However, it's not necessarily the way to instant riches or a "Steven King-dom".

Also, self-publishing or "Indie-Publishing" does not carry the stigma it used to – since your work lines up equally well on sales platforms such as Amazon – and a lot of readers now don't seem to care who the publisher is or isn't when they pop a book into their Kindles.

Personally, I have used http://createspace.com/ (the publishing arm of Amazon) and http://smashwords.com/ (a multi-platform e-book publishing site) to a certain degree of success. Their tutorials are relatively easily followed, and they have been around for a while. I'm sure they'll be around a while longer, so I believe my own catalog is safe.

Once you make it through their step-by-step processes and hit that "Publish" button, you will feel a euphoria unknown to the non-writer, non-publisher. Once you come down from that high, however, you need to concentrate on promoting and marketing your offerings. Few self-published books are instant successes without a push to let the buying public and your future loyal-readership know what you have to offer and how easily they can purchase it.

But I digress and marketing is the subject of my next blog. (Wouldn't want to get ahead of myself.)

Once your manuscript is written and edited (and re-edited to everyone's satisfaction), you need to carefully research your publishing choices.

Even if you go traditional, you need to make sure your publisher or your agent are reasonably honest and trustworthy. A search online should reveal any problems they may have in the industry.

Also, you need to be aware and perhaps wary of the vast array of subsidy publishers out there who may not have the best of reputations among authors and aspiring authors. Some may promote a good game, but after a large investment and sweat equity on your part, you may find yourself with cartons of unsold and/or unsalable books and the huge headache of selling them yourself. (Maybe not too much of a problem for our extroverts out there – but many of us fall on the introvert side of the author coin.)

I will not name names. Since I have avoided these companies, I have no tales of woe to tell, but again – "google" them. Find out what others are saying about those in which you are interested.

If you decide on my favorites (http://createspace.com/, and http://smashwords.com/), follow their instructions carefully. Check and recheck every step. If you have insurmountable problems, they offer excellent professional services, but you can publish absolutely free with them.) And you will end up with a product of which you can be extremely proud. A book you can put next to anybody's on the shelf and smile and say "Hey! I wrote that! Would you like me to autograph it for you?

By the way, that first autograph is going to put you on cloud nine. There is no better feeling for an author than to autograph a book and hand it back to a satisfied reader. (I know. I've been there. I've done that.)

Sorry, another tangent there. Back to publishing. You need to consider all the options available to offer your work to the widest possible audience. Besides print-on-demand books suitable for every conceivable outlet, you need to consider e-books in all their varied forms and requirements. It is essential to make your work available on Kindle type platforms.

Sounds confusing, I know, but remember Createspace, Amazon and Smashwords. They've got it all figured out for you. Just follow their instructions.

Beyond all the print and visual media out there, you also need to offer an audio option. I know I need to, and I'll be exploring www.audible.com for my audio publishing needs and will report my experiences in a future blog.

Remember, next month's blog should be on Marketing and promotion unless something else pops up that cannot be ignored. Hopefully, I will be reporting on my own successful efforts this month. However, I have procrastinated on taxes again this year, so don't know how much I will accomplish.

If you have any questions on any of these platforms or options, please leave a comment and I will answer. That's a new thing I'm doing – trying to be more responsive. I do have this problem – I am distracted by shiny objects – there goes one now – ooooh, so shiny…