As many of you know, I have a three-tiered editing program for my novel made up of readers of all ages: an entrepreneur-mogul type, a singer/songwriter/artist, a Buddhist vet tech, two elementary school teachers (both Valedictorians back in the day) an accountant/gardener extraordinaire, a sociology professor, a professional editor (of Mafia Wars fame), two college students (both incredibly talented artists and writers) a stay-at-home literary mom who reads those Russians (also an incredibly talented writer), a novelist, and my brother.
It's in the nit-picky editing stage so I have time to research self-publishing. What I've discovered is layers of middlemen (middlepeople?). The list of Print on Demand (POD) businesses is a long one.
AuthorHouse apparently publishes most books. That's an amazing statistic. Lulu, also popular, looks easy. My favorite though is WingSpan. Like all of them, they'll send me, the author, a check.
Hey, wait a minute! I thought I was going to publish my own book.
That's what they all say I'll be doing. And then they all say they'll let me buy my books from them - at a discount! Why, I could make 20 to 30% of the listed price of the book, which is better than the 6 to 8% an author makes with a publisher, but not by much.
I get the value of being hooked up with Amazon and that's one of the services PODs provide but who's going to so the searching? No one knows me. The people who do know me will buy signed copies. The breadth of my sales must come from my marketing platform: my own selling events, author fairs, book fairs, conferences, community programs, etc. After I've made 500 sales and managed to get my book reviewed, which is possible (ask me), what is to keep me from approaching Amazon, et al, as a publisher? It may not be done but that doesn't mean it cannot be done. In the meantime, my book will be available on my novel's blog.
It confuses me that writers so willingly give away control of their work and share the proceeds to boot. I want to sign the check that pays the printer to print my books. I want to pocket the profit I make from hawking said books. It's really so simple. Apparently revolutionary but still simple.
Wish me luck? I teach English at a community college and, while that doesn't guarantee I know what I'm doing, it helps that I've studied literature and have the spelling, punctuation, grammar thing down well enough to know I need to make good use of my time going over and over it and my resources. I've also been going to writing conferences and writing for years. Have published poetry, essays, features, the occasional letter to the editor - Google me - This is my first novel.
The story showed up in my imagination and I owe it to Justine to publish it. That is what writers do: We write. We need to be able to print and sell our stories. Let's start a revolution. Writers, unite!
