Walking on Eggshells – Adventures in Self-Publishing

So, I wrote a bunch of short stories and a couple of novels. Some of the short stories were published in small press magazines. Many more were rejected. I accumulated a file of rejections for the novels from agents and publishers. They say that a writer needs a thick skin. Well, mine wasn’t thick enough. I gave up.

Then the Kindle and the e-book self-publishing revolution came along. I didn’t even notice. Until I received a Kindle last Christmas. Even then, it took me months to appreciate the opportunities that were now open to a writer with a collection of scribblings sitting on the hard drive of his computer.

In August, I bundled ten short stories together into a collection that I named after one of the stories: Pond Life. Taking a deep breath, I published the collection for the Kindle on Amazon under a pseudonym. Once I’d worked out how to format the book, it was a doddle. It even has a professional cover designed by a kindly artist in return for a credit on the inside and a link to her website on my Facebook page.

Okay. My book was there, but then what was I supposed to do? I’ve read that there are in excess of a million self-published books on Amazon alone. There are numerous other self-publishing sites. How does an unknown become noticed in that sort of crowd?

I visited the Amazon discussion forums (or fora, if you’d prefer). There are a bewildering number, containing a bewildering number of threads, many of which contain tens of thousands of comments (posts). Daunting does not do it justice. I spent hour upon hour reading through threads, skimming thousands of posts, seeking advice on how to promote my book.

There’s a heck of a lot of advice out there. Not all of it good. But I managed to extract what I felt to be the worthy advice: join in discussions on the forums, have your own website, publish more books, join the Amazon programme that allows limited free book promotions.

Well, I joined the programme and have held one free promotional day thus far. Around sixty free copies of my book were downloaded, most in the States. That’s not many, but I learned a lot and should do better next time. I don’t yet have my own website, but have registered a domain name. And I’m rewriting the first novel (it was written over ten years ago and a rewrite is much needed) with the aim of publishing it in December. So that just leaves the forums. And that’s where the allusion to walking on eggshells comes in.

The Amazon Discussion Forums are essentially divided into two parts: those where writers can promote their work and those where they can’t. And woe betide a writer who self-promotes in the wrong forum. The outcome can be carnage. Some readers keep NRA lists (Never Read Authors). It has been known for authors to have their books subjected to scathing reviews from reviewers disgruntled at what an author has posted on the forums. Even mentioning that you are a writer in the wrong place can lead to withering attacks.

And not all authors behave professionally. There are threads devoted to the antics of what are labelled BBA (Badly Behaving Authors). Sometimes this label is deserved. 

So do I regret jumping headlong into the shark-infested self-publishing sea? Not for one moment. It’s been fun and exciting and I’ve ‘met’ some friendly and talented people in cyberspace. I’ve had a short story featured on another author’s website. I’ve had the same story published in an anthology that, as I write, is in the top 100 Science-fiction Anthologies. I’ve started to garner reviews: thankfully, all positive so far. Someone even wants to interview me for her blog. It may not be much, but it’s a start and I’m hungry for more.

Now to get that first novel published…