Bookworm Press





2) Publishing books the traditional way. That’s even harder, unless you have at least ten years to find an agent and the agent will need another ten years to find a publisher (if the agent lasts that long and doesn’t decide to quit and go bag groceries—there is nothing wrong with bagging groceries by the way). Okay, so perhaps I exaggerate a little. I haven’t tried that route for very long, so I’m not an expert here.

3) Publishing books as an independent author—fairly easy these days. BUT here is the clincher: promotion. It can be done BUT IT TAKES TIME. And that’s where many indie authors dive into a world of illusions. You write an excellent novel or two (that’s the bottom line), you do everything right, hire an editor, spend some money on a cover design, post in Amazon, B&N or other venue, blog about it, go on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Google+, collect reviews and expect to sell books like hot cakes, quit your day job (big trouble), and live happily ever after. It doesn’t happen that way.

The competition is fierce. There are thousands of independent authors fighting for a spot in the limelight and on Amazon bestseller list. I’m not saying it can’t happen. There are independently published authors who are successful and are able to support themselves that way and there will be more in the future. I personally know of a couple, one of them is Scott Nicholson, my editor. If you study the background of the authors who made the jump successfully, you will notice several common elements.

1) Most of these authors have written and published many books, anywhere from 10 to 20 or more.
2) They tend to write in a popular genre (thrillers, romance, YA).
3) Some have been published traditionally before going indie.
4) They know something about promotion and if they don’t, they are willing to learn.
5) They work their butts off and have been doing it for many years, often without much external or monetary reward.
6) They got lucky (important factor).

So, what are we newbies who have perhaps one or two novels under our belt and published them last year and perhaps this year supposed to do? Well, I can’t tell you what you have to do; I can only tell you what I plan to do.

I don’t depend on my writing to make a living, at least not yet. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen one day, but I am not holding my breath. And not depending on the income from my books gives me more freedom to explore and experiment with my writing, and it takes that awful pressure away of having to sell books all the time. I make my money as a freelance translator, I do odd jobs, I work temp jobs at a university. I know, I know, I hear you. Then you don’t have enough time to write. I wrote and published two novels and I translated one into German. I get up at five in the morning (okay, so sometimes it’s six), I don’t watch much TV, I have no social life, at least none to speak of. If you write one page a day, you have a 365-page novel in one year (which is much too long for readers with today’s limited attention span).

I sell a few books here and there, get some royalty checks that make me feel great. And I am the happiest person on earth if someone likes my books. That’s the greatest feeling of all. That’s why I try to write reviews of books I like to tell other authors that they made a difference in my life, that they touched me in a deep way.

And isn’t that what writing is all about, what art in general is all about? To go beyond the surface of things, to dig a little deeper than the glitzy veneer of “success,” and to share something meaningful with others. Do I sound like an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy idealist? Perhaps.

See, my background is in poetry, so I am used to not making any money as a writer. Poets—even famous poets or poet laureates—can usually not support themselves through their poetry alone. They either have a university job, they translate if they know more than one language, they teach, they have workshops, they bag groceries.

But there will always be times, in spite of all the wonderful things I just listed, when we feel down, misunderstood, discouraged, just simply rotten. IT’S CALLED LIFE. Get it? If we feel that way, it helps to connect with other authors, blog about your whine fest. It’s always good to know, we are not alone. Perhaps do something nice for someone else, it makes us feel better. Perhaps read a book—writers are supposed to read! And then let’s get back to work.

Happy writing—and reading!

Last year, I decided to publish my debut novel, Love of a Stonemason, on my own. My second novel is at the proofreader’s at the moment. Since I began to publish my books through my micro publishing venture, Bookworm Press, I have been following the development of independent publishing with great interest. I make it a point to read as many indie books as possible, not just to support my fellow authors but also to find out what’s out there and, last but not least, to learn what works and what doesn’t work. As an “author in training” I believe that the best learning experience is reading the books by other authors and learning from both their strengths and weaknesses.

I discovered some wonderful books that really impressed me. To be sure, in many cases, the writing is still a little “rough around the edges.” However, one thing they all have in common: The authors have great stories to tell, stories that matter, stories they care deeply about. And I believe this fact alone gives them the right to be “out there” and available. Craft can be learned. However, the desire to write something that has meaning and that matters not just to you but to someone else is, in my humble opinion, the foundation of good writing.

As I mentioned, I am an “author in training.” I’m not an expert. I am just an avid reader and passionate writer. And I hope I’ll get some feedback from readers and writers as well as editors who happened to read these posts.

I want to start by pointing out an issue I have come across in many ebooks, and not just in the ones published by indies: FORMATTING. I can’t tell you how many times I felt like throwing my Kindle against the wall when I read a good story that was so poorly formatted that it more or less ruined the reading experience for me. I’m not talking about an occasional wrong indentation or a space where there shouldn’t be one. The transformation process from MS Word or HTML to the different ebook formats is not perfect.

What I am talking about is, for instance, inconsistent justification of the text: one paragraph being left-justified and the next one flush left and flush right. Or, what’s even worse, different fonts all through the book, font changes within paragraphs, the size of the font changing from one paragraph to the next. As a reader, you don’t know if the changes are voluntary or accidental. Sometimes authors use a different font or italics on purpose, for instance to set a flashback to a past event or action off from the ongoing plot of the story. So, an involuntary change from one font to the other can completely throw the reader.

Poor formatting is not only confusing but it makes the book look unprofessional. You can always spot check an ebook version before publishing it. On Amazon, for instance, it gives you the opportunity to view at least an approximate likeness of your book. And it wouldn’t hurt to download the book after it has been published (even if you have to pay for it) and check it out on your Kindle or on your computer with the free Kindle for the PC. If you publish on Smashwords, you can download all the different ebook versions for free. There is also an excellent formatting guide on Smashwords (also for free). If you detect formatting problems, you can always upload a corrected version.

If you do the formatting of your ebook yourself, there is an easy to understand and free program a friend of mine recommended. It lets you create several different ebook versions on your computer. You can then check them out carefully before you upload and publish the book. It’s called Calibre and it can be downloaded from here: http://calibre-ebook.com/. There are other programs such as this. This is just the one I happened to come across and use for my books. It works well for me.

If you don’t want to do your own formatting, there are now many services out there that do the formatting for you at a reasonable cost. Since I have done my own formatting so far, I don’t have any personal experience with them. Suggestions are welcome!

The most important thing, however, is to check the formatting of your ebook carefully, whether you do it yourself or use a service. It shows that you care about your book and, most importantly, about the reader.

A good cover is important as well, of course—very important. But the best cover does not compensate for a poorly formatted ebook. On the contrary, a reader who buys your book because of its attractive cover and then discovers the formatting mess will really be irate.

Happy formatting! Check back for more blog posts on the fascinating and exciting world of independent publishing and all those writing pitfalls we struggle with, like spelling—ouch!!

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