Memoirs of the Self-Published: Part I

I'm one month away from printing and hand-binding my first collection of short stories entitled Papers for the Suppression of Reality. My book will hit bookshelves at a small, independent bookstore far away from you in January, 2011. Here's the first installment of a chronicle of my experiences:

Some weeks ago, I went to my local library and picked up Writer's Market 2010, The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing (4th Edition), and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Self-Publishing. Of these, I found the last to be the most helpful.

Writer's Market cautions against self-publishing, and makes it sound like an unreasonable proposition, and something to be done only after submitting dozens of query letters to literary agents and only after your manuscript has been rejected by several publishing houses:

"If you've exhausted all these options and you still think you can reach an audience, then self-publishing could be an option for you. However, make sure you research all your self-publishing options to save time, money and headaches. Self-publishing is a very rough road for any writer and often turns into a full-time jobs with a very low rate of success."

Writer's Market is very much ingrained (as it's been around for 90 years) in the traditional publishing landscape of only through an agent and a large publishing house can you get your work out there. I believe that publishing has changed.

The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing by Tom and Marilyn Ross, although it might be a good resource to some, comes off as a bit hokey to me. Chapters titled "Cyber Options Beyond Your Wildest Imagination" and "Killer PR: The Great Equalizer" get in the way of me just trying to get the information I need about how to get cataloged in the Library of Congress, the differences between a CIP and PCN, and questions like that.

The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing reads like a self-help book for the self-published (which may be a great resource, if you need motivation)--but to me it seems to over-explain things that don't need explaining. And at over 500 pages is a bit too complete of a resource for me. I just want to get answers to the basic questions I have, and I don't need the "Four Rules That Will Almost Guarantee You Success."

Why would they emphasize Guarantee, when it's modified by Almost? This seems contradictory. Subtle things like this got in the way of me taking this book seriously, and its tips on "Hitting the Catalog Jackpot," may be interesting to some, but not to me.

Finally, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Self-Publishing by Jennifer Basye Sander was actually the most sober, concise, and easy to read book I found on self-publishing. Despite its title, it's not written for a Complete Idiot, but it's the best guide on self-publishing I've read. It covers all the major issues in self-publishing in a way that's easy to navigate. One can dive right in and find areas to look into about taxes, setting up a business, intellectual property law, and all these areas that other titles take twice as many pages to cover and do half as well.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Self-Publishing makes self-publishing out not to be the formidable last-option that Writer's Market portrays it to be, but something that's doable if you go in for the right reasons. You aren't going to get rich, but if you're business-smart, you can get your publication exactly how you want it (my preferences are in parenthesis):

• Title (long and obscure)
• Font (archaic)
• Paper (1oo% cotton)
• Cover (unique)
• Look (non-traditional)
• Design (amateur, but well-thought-out)
• Feel (amateur, but well-intentioned)
• and all the inserts you want (including maps!)
  

When self-publishing, your only limit is your imagination and pocketbook--not the publishing house's finance officer. And if you do things right, you can even earn a modest profit, because although you're selling far fewer titles than going with a Manhattan-based publishing house, you're making 100% of the profit, and not 8% (a typical author's purse after the money gets distributed to the publisher, agent, distributor, publicist, etc.)

These are my initial readings on the subject. I don't know where I'll end up. It's a journey--we'll see where it takes me.