I recently discovered Keyboard Hussy and her wonderfully, refreshingly opinionated blog about her exploration into the world of self-publishing. One post in particular has really inspired me, and it's this one. In it, the author discusses the pros and cons of worrying about poor self-published authors, and concludes that she's just going to get on with her own writing, rest of us be damned. I agree that good writers will ultimately triumph over rubbish ones. I left a little comment thanking her for her thoughts and got a reply from someone else which I liked so much that I am posting it here. I'm not sure he's right about everything, but I do think what he says is quite insightful, and it's given me something to think about.
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Elenya,
“You know, your point about not caring and just getting on with writing has totally made my week. Why worry about what you can’t change when you can worry about how you’re going to one-up them all by being awesome?” (This was quoted from my comment.)
Yoda to Luke:
Control, control. You must learn control!
You’ve got it. You, and only you, control you destiny. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to other people. You should. But you should analyze what they are saying, and what it means to you.
"You're pretty heavy for a small guy."
Take my prediction that Brick and Mortar book stores will be mostly dead by the spring of 2013. To most writers this sounds pretty scary. To me it sounds like a huge opportunity.
I write odd stuff. I’m working on a non-fiction book about agriculture in the Province of Ontario. While it’s mostly about Ontario, it will be of interest to farmers, and farm equipment fans worldwide. It’s not the sort of thing that traditional publishers would publish unless a government grant was going to cover the publishing costs. Since I’m my own publisher, and I’m publishing it as an EBook, my costs are pretty low, so I should make out by going totally electronic.
Genre fiction writers will also do well. The latest Harry Dresden book just came out. We bought the EBook version, it arrived on our IPad the morning of the release, we didn’t even have to leave the house to get it.
On June 14, 2011 I ordered David Weber’s How Firm a Foundation from Amazon. It will arrive in the Kindle App in my IPad on September 13, 2011, saving me fuel to drive to the store, time, and $13.03 in cost. Oh yeah and it weighs several pounds less. I have over 500 books on my IPad including De Bello Gallico and Other Commentaries by Julius Caesar in English and Commentarii de Bello Gallico by Julius Caesar in Latin thanks to Project Gutenberg.
So keep pushing. If my predictions are right, we are on the verge of a new age for artists (with artist being used as a word defining a creator of any sort, whether of a classical sort of artwork, i.e. painting, sculpture, stained glass, mosaic, etc., of written works, i.e. poet, fiction or non-fiction writer, of music, i.e. singer, singer/songwriter, musician, of well, just about anything that requires creativity, which is a pretty wide range of endeavour.
Of course the publishers would have you believe that we are coming upon a huge disaster. What they don’t want you to know is that out of a $10.00 EBook sold by a publisher, you will get about $1.00, while out of a $2.99 EBook sold by you directly through Amazon you will make $2.09!
Think. You would only have to sell half as many EBooks through Amazon direct to make a living as through the publisher. Another way of looking at it is that you are giving the publisher $5.98 for each EBook sold if you allow them to have EBook rights.
Do the numbers add up?
They of course will tell you that this is standard with all new contracts. You should sit back and think. If they want the rights so badly, just how valuable are they to you instead, and why shouldn’t you keep them, and tell the publisher to drop dead?
Anyway, it’s two hours past bed time, and I have some heavy duty editing to do tomorrow.
Have fun, and keep on writing. YOU are in control. Show them how good you are.
Wayne
The commenter's website is here, by the way, should you be interested in looking.
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What do YOU think? Please let me know!
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