Publishing your book
Is self-publishing a good idea? Yes and no. Let’s deal with the no bit first.
As I mentioned last time when talking about getting an agent, the top, absolute Number One target for anyone who’s finished their first novel must always be to get it taken on by a mainstream publishing house. The main reason for this is very simple: they can get your novel into bookshops and they have the marketing budget to buy advertising space as well as the ability to target reviewers. If your novel is on the new books table and it gets even one decent review in a Sunday paper or online equivalent, it could boost your writing career at a stroke and change your life for ever. That’s the dream but what’s the reality? How can you make this happen?
The first problem, unless you’re very good or very lucky, is that the process of getting your book to the right person in a publishing house can take a horribly long time – even with the help of an agent. We all know about J K Rowling’s struggle to get the first Harry Potter novel published. What does that say about the judgement of the people who said no? Remember her story when you receive your first rejection email – and move on. Most important of all, keep going, just like she did. Don’t get bitter and twisted. Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to send some kind of ‘flame-mail’ response telling them that they’re wrong. Remember that success is the best revenge.
As I said about finding an agent, if you’re young (or at least younger than me!) and you have the time and the energy to do it, by all means keep knocking on the door until someone eventually says yes. If you don’t have an agent and you’re going to do it yourself, buy a copy of the Writers & Artists Yearbook and work your way through the list of publishers. Concentrate first on those who publish writers you admire. Cynically, it’s a useful answer if they ask why you’ve chosen them. Go online and find out about the individual editors and their lists. If it’s possible to do so, try to focus on an editor directly. Try to appeal to them with the kind of tantalising pitch that they can’t possibly resist. And if they say no, like I said, move on to the next one. Just because a publishing house is big doesn’t mean that it will do a better job for you. Look at the smaller independents too – there are loads of them.
But supposing you don’t have the time for all this – because all the time you’re doing this you’re not writing another novel. Or what if you just get fed-up with the rejection? That’s where self-publishing is so wonderful. There’s no-one telling you what to do. You are the publisher. You can decide exactly what you want to do and when to do it. Result.
I have to confess here that I’m not a patient person. I worked for 20 years in television, writing scripts for various drama series, which didn’t help matters. During my time in the job I got used to script editors and producers deciding that they didn’t like what I’d done and requesting me to do another draft or two or three. Or even scrapping the whole thing and starting again. You have to grit your teeth and do it or you don’t get paid. You get used to this but it doesn’t mean you have to like it. After 20 years, I really didn’t like it at all. So one of the biggest reasons for me to go down the self-publishing route was to avoid someone telling me that they wanted another draft. It’s as simple as that!
I only have experience of doing this on Amazon with their Kindle Direct Publishing but there are Apple iBooks too, of course, as well as Google Play Books among others. This entry’s turned out to be much longer than I thought, so next time I’ll take you through how to get your book onto Amazon and instantly available to the whole wide World. Hooray!
Meanwhile, as always…Happy writing!