I’ve read a couple of articles
recently where people talked about their experience as an e-book writer and self-publisher.
Each had a friend who made a success of it and raked in the money and they were
inspired to give it a go.
One male, one female - each
throwing up an e-book with the sole desire to make money and they attempted this
because they were desperate. One chose romance, the other erotica with shape-changing
dragons, and neither should have been writing in either genre. He describes it
as embarrassing and an uninviting stew. His research was asking one ex-girlfriend
what she read as erotica.
She spent an inordinate amount of
time generating a fake persona and opening twitter accounts in that name. But she
has an agent who says her book got readable after the 135th page and clearly doesn't
normally represent romance novels at all given the way she said ‘she understood’
that they had simple plots.
If it only gets readable at page
135, I have serious doubts about the whole thing; or is that the whole thing? *snorts* It got readable when I could see ‘the
end’ on the page.
They slap some awful cover on it
and load it onto Kindle expecting the money to roll in.
And *spoiler alert* it doesn't. One
sells 18 copies and the other 3 or something.
I consider my books and my stories
as wordy babies. I love them. I cry with the characters. I fall in love with
them. I have honestly sobbed when I have killed characters off or broken their
hearts. And if the sex I write doesn't turn me
on, how the heck will it turn anyone else on? Why would I be ashamed of them? Why
would I shove them out poorly dressed and prepared for the world?
Is it worse that they fail after I
have put my heart and soul into them? Maybe. But I will know that I did the
best I could for them.
They are both so ashamed of the
book they have written that they don’t put any
care into marketing or releasing them. I’ll bet that they aren’t tagged
correctly. I can’t imagine they put much effort into writing a summary or teaser
pitch for them. Her book doesn’t sound like a romance novel at all given she
says it is super angsty. Romance readers expect a HEA or HFN (happy for now)
ending. There is a formula and she hasn’t researched it and she doesn’t know
that because she doesn’t read the books.
Their products must reek of the desperation
they exude. Unlike their friends’ efforts.
They can both clearly write. They
have funny, self-deprecating articles published on webpages. And I hope they got
paid for it.
So where did they go wrong? I
reckon they both chose genres they didn’t understand or care about. They don’t
read in the genre they chose to write in. I don’t read military fiction, why
would I try to write it?
And they missed another big marketing
opportunity. In each article, they don’t say what the book was or give their penname
and they don’t give a link to it because they are still so ashamed of it. Thankfully, Beverly Bush is a fake penname because
if it was real you’d be ruined right off the blocks for romance writing.
A few people who read the article
might have gone to buy the book or read it on their Kindle account to see if it
is as bad as the authors say it is. That’s some more sales and reviews they didn’t
even try to get.
In the world of self-publishing
right now, you have to be everything; writer, marketer, editor, agent and
promoter. And if you can’t do all of that by yourself, find people who can help
you, even if you have to pay them.
Because if you don’t care about
what you produce, no-one else will.
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