I always enjoy talking about my journey from being a writer who writes simply for pleasure to one who has books for sale on Amazon (and elsewhere). And sharing that journey with a group of other writers, as I did recently at Waterside Writers, was particularly rewarding. And that was because I felt they “got it”, more so than a general group of listeners, most of whom aren’t writers and don’t share my desire to see my “darlings” out in the world, physically or electronically or both . . .
But the members of WW are like me in that they write because they love it, and because they somehow have to. Some would like to be published one way or another, and my brief was to explain how I had achieved publication, not – in the end – through the traditional publishing route that begins with finding an agent, but through self-publishing.
My personal brief with WW was also to be honest: I wanted to make the self-publishing process sound absolutely achievable (which it is), but not to pretend that it is easy. I was keen not to underplay the marketing effort required to achieve “visibility” – and therefore sales – for the books I’d laboured long to write. (I didn’t actually say this but, sometimes, the writing seems the “easy” part! Of course it isn’t easy at all but, compared with marketing… Well, on balance, I’d certainly rather be writing than marketing, essential as the latter is!)
Anyway, I talked quite a lot about social media – Facebook, Twitter, creating a website, writing a blog, building a mailing list – all things I really hadn’t particularly wanted to engage in but realised I would have to if I was going to achieve that precious “visibility”. Of course, as with most unfamiliar things, once you get the hang of them, they no longer seem so daunting. But, for me at any rate, everything about this self-publishing business has seemed pretty daunting, and has involved a steep learning curve, much of which I’ve come to grips with this year.
But, now, I’m really glad I’ve made the effort. I explained why I decided that traditional publishing was not for me, and why I chose to take the self-publishing route. I explained the two methods of self-publishing I’ve used over the past three years. Initially, for my first two books, I had a publishing services company take over all the scary stuff like book formatting, cover design, liaising with distributors etc. But then, this year, for my third book, I decided to go it alone, handling all of the “scary stuff” myself. And I was able to report, absolutely honestly, that I’m delighted that I’ve now taken that leap into “proper” self-publishing, because of the control it gives me over my books, and the pleasure it brings to know that I can write and publish my books according to my own wishes and my own agenda.
That is not to say that my journey has been without downs as well as ups… There have been plenty of low points along the way. But overall, as I declared at the end of my talk, I do most definitely feel that, for me, it has been well worth all the striving.