Temptations Involved in Self-Publishing

If you saw my semi-ranting book review on Tuesday, you may remember that the book in question was self-published.

Now, don't go jumping to conclusions. I've read plenty of self-published books in my time, and several of them are quite good. Sure, perhaps they shouldn't be judged the same way as one would evaluate a traditionally-published book (although some indeed can, e.g., Michelle Davidson Argyle's Cinders), but they tend to be good...

...if the author puts in the proper amount of time, energy, and possibly money.

I think there's a strong temptation these days to hop too quickly into the self-publishing route. I know I've thought about it, and I'm sure I'm not alone. There can be several factors involved in not having a book accepted by an agent or an editor that have nothing to do with the quality of the work: it's not the right time; the market's already flooded with similar stories; there's no market for similar stories; the agent/editor was in a bad mood that day; it got lost in the slush pile; etc. But, we all know that sometimes it IS the quality of the work that's the problem.

For many of us, we go back to the drawing board, edit, slash, burn, revise, repeat.

Some, though, may go the self-publishing route.

Again, I'm not saying this is a bad option. It's hard to get a break in this industry, we all know. But with self-publishing comes heavy responsibility to make sure that your book can attempt to stand among the more traditionally-published books.

Taking that book that never sold and publishing it as-is on CreateSpace is not the way to go. And just because you're best friend/spouse/neighbor/mother/sibling/cat think it's the best story ever written doesn't mean the general public—a.k.a. those people who don't know you from the annoying neighbor who doesn't clean up after his/her dog—will agree.

So, what needs to happen in the route of self-publishing? Here are my top three recommendations.

First, good critique partners. I suggest people you don't know in the real world, i.e., people who won't be afraid to tell you the truth. All of my critique partners, I've met online through blogging, and with most of them I don't even discuss my personal life. It's all about the words. Keep the relationship professional and potentially brutal. It's the best way to get honest opinions. They should spot technical and factual errors, comment on awkward phrasing, and tell you when the pace slows, when they're bored, or when you've strayed too much from your original story. Take those opinions and edit, slash, burn, revise, repeat.

Second, after you've ripped and shredded—which you might think you did before querying, but, hell, do it again! what could it hurt—hire a professional editor. You may think you know grammar, but this professional, if properly doing his/her job, will make you question how you managed to pass elementary English. This editor should have strong opinions on the Oxford comma (either pro or con, doesn't matter, as long as it's a strong opinion—and here's mine) and a sharp eye. S/he should not only cover your manuscript in so much red ink that it makes your HS English teacher blush, but this person should also once again be reading for factual and technical errors in the content. An editor that only edits for commas and typos isn't worth the money, unless you specify (and, dear God, why would you?) that that's all you want. A good professional editor is worth his/her weight in gold nuggets, so be prepared to shell out accordingly. In the end, it's worth it.

Finally, don't let your 12 year old design your cover. You may firmly believe in his/her talent, as do your spouse and the 7th grade art teacher, but, again, the rest of the world is full of brutal cynics like me who will take one look at the cover and decide never to read the book. Paying for a professional artist who has experience in cover design is worth the money. Don't think you can cut costs on this just because your brother's best friend's ex-girlfriend's roommate had a minor in art in college ten years ago. Just pay the cost.

Do you have any experiences in self-publishing? What do you think of the self-publishing option these days? Have you ever considered it? Would you?

Guest Post: Theresa Milstein

In honor of the HONE YOUR SKILLS Blogfest, Charity and I decided to invite a few different authors to our respective blogs to discuss their journeys, including writing in mediums beyond the novel (which we all love, of course). What helped them develop and get their name out there?

So today, I'm pleased to welcome our first guest, Theresa Milstein from the Substitute Teacher's Saga. She's agreed to share some of her writing experiences, and especially how she came to write short stories above and beyond her novel aspirations.

**wild applause**
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Short Story Journey

Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.

—Lynn Abbey

When I began writing nearly five years ago, it was a middle grade novel that wound up being 65k words. Then I made a leap to YA, and most of my stories hover around 50k. Since blogging, I’ve gobbled up advice on how to be a successful writer. One constant has been to write for magazines to get my name out there and build a resume.

One problem.

A few years ago, I had tried to take my first manuscript and turn it into a short story. After sending it to three or four places, I received all rejections. I didn’t understand that I couldn’t create a short story by pulling the first chapter (or two) of a novel. Longer stories introduce too many elements in the beginning and they don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Those rejections convinced me to stop wasting my time.

Sometimes I’d come across a writer’s blog, mentioning some contest or upcoming anthology that requested short story submissions. I’d comment, “Thanks for the link, but I don’t write short stories.”

It was with the same conviction as when I’d say, “I only write fantasy,” because every time I had tried to write a manuscript without a magical element, I’d lose interest.

Then I wrote this YA vampire manuscript Aura. Agents and editors said nice things about it, but they didn’t want to take a chance on another vampire story. I knew this was the possible outcome the day I couldn’t ignore the story forming in my mind and began to write it. After a bunch of rejections, I shelved it and began something new.

Then my blogging friend, Aubrie at Flutey Words mentioned an upcoming YA anthology called Fangtales from Wyvern Publications. They’d previously published Fangtales and Mertails.

Aubrie is the most prolific chick I know. She’s always got a long piece and one or more short pieces she’s working on. She submits everywhere, and it’s paid off because she has a list of publishing credits.

While I had ignored all her other links for short story submissions, I couldn’t deny this one interested me. YA and vampires. Should I take Aura and reduce it? I loved her voice and didn’t want the manuscript to gather dust in my hard drive. But if I revised it to make a story that fit the 2k-5k guidelines, would I be able to do anything with the full story in the future? By now, I also knew pulling chapters didn’t create a quality short story.

One thing I liked about Aura was her strong voice. Most of my female characters start off unsure, but then obtain moxie later on in the story. Not Aura. As I mulled over what to do with my old story, a new one began to form in my mind. One Saturday, I sat down and began to write “Allured”.

What type of writer are you, a plotter or a panster? I’m a panster. I get a first line or a basic idea of the beginning, and then I just write. There’s nothing more exciting to me than bumbling along like a rock skipping down a stream to see where my story takes me. I wrote the same way I did longer pieces, but had to be sparer with my words. Each one had to count so I could keep the word count under control.

But I had newfound confidence because as a blogger, I’d learned to write pieces at just around 1k. Now I just had to write at least 1k more, and make it fiction instead of nonfiction. I could do that, right?

I’d often eye my number of words at the bottom of the document. When I reached what I thought was the middle – the turnaround moment – I realized I’d be fine.

One thing I’ve learned from reading short stories is that there’s always some big unanswered question at the end. As I wrote, and the end became clear to me, I got more and more excited because I had a most short-story-like ending, which has less closure than a novel.

After I completed the story, I did the usual editing, and gave it to three readers who gave suggestions, and I edited again. The difference between a novel and short story is it all happened quickly. A short story has fewer plots, and therefore, fewer plot HOLES. There were fewer characters to keep track of, fewer words to mess up with spelling and grammar errors. Was I beginning to like writing short stories?

Whether or not my story is going to be accepted, I don’t yet know. The decision will be made in March. But if it’s not chosen, I will consider revising again, and search for another home for it.

In January, a short story anthology was advertised for 500-1000 words – the length of my typical blog entry.

No problem!

(Want to read the rest of Theresa's Story? Visit Charity's blog for the second part of the saga.)
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A HUGE thank you to Theresa for sharing her story with us today. If you haven't already, be sure to check out Theresa's blog.

Has Theresa's story inspired you to try your hand at shorter fiction? Join us for the HONE YOUR SKILLS Blogfest. Write a short story (750-1000 words) and get instant feedback from fellow bloggers.

Have you ever tried your hand at short story writing? Have you had anything published? Would you like to share your story? Email me at rlconnolly01 [at] gmail [dot] com.

Figuring Out the Market

I'm terribly new to all of this, but, on a whim, I started looking at different websites for literary agents yesterday, and have spent the vast majority of the last 24 hours--through sleep deprivation and the incessant buzzing of the fire alarm in dark, dank scary basement of my rental that is the dungeon horror films are made of (and therefore I refuse to go down there and turn it off)--looking at literary blogs, writers' workshops, editors' blogs, writing community websites, etc.

This has all caused me to realize a few things about the trilogy I've been working on for a year and that I need to change (e.g., *hook your reader on the first page*, which I think I fail at terribly).  While I have two people currently reviewing book one for me (and yes, they're friends, but see below as to why), I think I need to go back and completely rewrite chapter 1 of book 1, making it more of the "show" and less of the "tell".  Somehow I am a lot more aware of this everywhere else in the 425,000 words, but this first chapter somehow keeps avoiding the big red correction pen.

The second thing I've realized is that now is probably not the best time to work on my marketing skills.  I'm taking my PhD exams this fall, and I know I'll need to put a lot of effort into that, as well as my summer class and that darned incomplete I have from December.  Of course, I've spent the last month of my summer working on, what?  Oh, that's right.  None of the above.  Instead, I've just cuddling up with my new computer and writing at the work that doesn't pay me.

And, finally, I've realized that I'm terrified of the whole huge process of selling myself and my work.  I like my work (mostly... on the good days), but that doesn't mean that anyone else will.  The fact of it is that, in a shameful, shameful effort to build my own self-esteem about my work, I've given draft copies of the first few chapters of book one to about a half-dozen people.  To date, only two have read past chapter 10 (there are 28 in book 1 alone, I might add), one of whom is one of the two people currently reviewing it for me.  While this does wonders for my self-esteem (here, let me give you a rag to clean up that dripping sarcasm), my confidence level in my work is far from high at the moment.

A few weeks ago, on a whim of advice--*always have a minimum of two projects at once*--I started another story which consumed my life for eight days (the story that I'm slowly posting here).  I sincerely needed a break from Anabelle and Marcus (the protagonists of my trilogy), and took it eagerly.  After a couple of weeks, I felt ready, reinvigorated, and I went back, making the final revisions to A&M #1 to send it off for review.  I moved on to A&M #2, fleshing out what had been 110,000 words of "semi-showing" into 140,000 of "telling", including inserted chapters for character development and extended dialogues.

But now, on the epilogue of A&M #2 (these novels do have names, btw, though I sincerely dislike them at the moment and have no interest in committing them to the ether that knows and remembers all), I'm stuck again.  It hasn't been six weeks since I spent so long working on the wedding story, and I'm frustrated that my momentum has run dry.  I know that taking a break is healthy, and I'm not a writing super-hero. Honestly, I should be proud of what I have and that I churned out the bare-bones of it so quickly (though that just means more revisions now and later).  But still, my confidence is low.

I will mention, though, that I entered a contest for a consultation with literary agent Nathan Bransford in celebration of the release of a client's book.  My confidence isn't necessarily high enough to think I'll win, or even make it into the finalists, but I entered.  Yesterday my confidence was low enough that I almost didn't enter, but I forced myself to do it, drawing from A&M #3 from one of the six chapters of action that come after a very central event (for give my vagueness).  I won't know which 500-word snippets made finalists until Friday.

So keep your fingers crossed for me (whoever you are, if you're out there).  Even if I don't make the finalists, something has to come my way soon to raise a wave of confidence in me again.