It's December! Wow, is that crazy. I feel like time got confused at some point and is now moving at some strange, disjointed pace that only time understands.
Anyway, December seems like a great time to do a year end wrap up and see how far I've come this year! Yay, progress!
About a year ago I decided to self-publish. I wrote lots of posts about it, apparently. I discovered them when I went to check my archive to see if I could figure out when it was I decided to self-publish because past me did not mark a day on my calendar for it or anything. Damn it, past me. Don't you know I like to get strangely sentimental about things? (Dear past self: You will be reassured to know that I STILL LOVE CAPS LOCK AND EXCLAMATION MARKS!)
So last December I declared that I would self-publish Queen of Broken Hearts which I DID. I also said I would put it up in February, which I did not do. I published it in April, then King of Forgotten Clubs came out in September (after I said July...) Let's not connect the dots and find the pattern here, okay? Okay. (also, I put up two books under a pen name! But I guess those aren't relevant to this blog, so.) (Did I mention that we still use parentheses, past self?).
I also made a list last year about the reasons why I decided to self-publish. Let's see how they measured up to reality, shall we?
POINT ONE: My first reason was that I expected that self-publishing would make me more money than traditional publishing. Now, I can't say for sure because I haven't tried, but I estimate if I'd gone the traditional route I'd have made zero dollars by now because I'd still be querying. By going the self publishing route I've made $41.92. (I mean, until you deduct expenses and it turns negative. But let's all cover our eyes and pretend expenses don't exist, okay? ALL SMALL BUSINESS LOSE MONEY IN THE FIRST NINE MONTHS, OKAY?)
POINT TWO: I declared that the only opinions that mattered are the readers. And, yes, getting good reviews from people who have never met me has been pretty awesome. (I have two!) And, and, I got a fan email! That was fantastically epic and would not have happened otherwise.
POINT THREE: Getting to write whatever I want. Yeah, I should have realized that with my massive tendency to be distracted by shiny things this would lead to endless BUT I WANT TO WRITE ALL THE THINGS! Still, I definitely would not have been able to write a novella series with traditional publishing, so I WIN!
POINT FOUR: I can still pursue traditional publishing if I want. And at this stage? Eh. *shrug* Don't really want to.
Shockingly, I did meet the next part of the post and publish four books this year. Crazy. But I am not selling 125 copies of each one a month, so the math does not remotely work. Ah, youth.
But I think most importantly, self-publishing has given me a lot I never even expected. It's been fantastically fun. I have BOOKS. On the internet! And people can buy them! For people who know me, my writing went from being a theoretical thing I did when I wasn't around them to something they could point to and go, "oh, yeah, she writes books and they're right there."
Plus, covers are so much fun. I had fun working with a cover designer, and I'm having fun now working on my own covers. Yay, photoshop!
Also, I've met AWESOME people. I feel like I'm part of a community now of other people who are equally as crazy as me. When I think about it I just want to hug all the internet friends I've made and give them cookies. But I can't. Because we don't have a teleporter yet. So only my roommates can have the cookies (the hugs are all for my dog, because she can't have cookies).
I'm happy I decided to self-publish last year. And obviously by this time next year I'm going to be a millionaire, so I'd better get to work on that. Also, on inventing a teleporter. Because I think I made too many cookies.
And if there's anyone still reading this who is debating whether or not to self-publish, DO IT. It's super fun! All the cool kids are doing it! Think about how in a year you could be as awesome as I am! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO. You'll even get to write awesome indie life posts! Join us! Joooiiinnn uuusss!
0 comments:
Post a Comment