Karen Wrighton
It was quite a decision, whether to tout my beloved ‘new born’ debut
novel, Ascension of the Whyte, around
a myriad of publishers and agents in the hope that one of them would recognise
it’s (to me) obvious brilliance, or to self publish and let the public decide
whether it really was as beautiful as I believed it to be. The gestation time
is long with a book, it grows inside you much longer than the nine months you
would carry a child, and you become very attached and protective of it.
Choosing between self-publishing and traditional publishing
methods is not an easy matter as there are many and varied options
available to authors today, with different pros and cons associated with
travelling either route.
Stories of popular and even great novels being rejected tens or
even hundreds of times, before finally being published, deterred me from
proffering my beloved first ‘child’ for judgement. Through much research I
unearthed these thought provoking examples amongst many others: Lord of the Flies by William Golding -
rejected twenty times, Gone with the Wind
by Margaret Mitchell - rejected thirty eight times, Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen –
rejected one hundred and forty times. Carrie
by Steven King – rejected thirty times and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling -
rejected twelve times and she was told not to give up her day job!
Can you imagine if J. K. Rowling had decided after ten rejections
that she would just give up trying and stick to her ‘day job’? There would be no best-selling book series,
no blockbuster films, no Warner Brothers World of Harry Potter and possibly no
fame as an actor for a young man called Daniel Radcliffe. Also of course, J. K.
Rowling would not now be one of the richest and most well known women on the
face of the planet.
When most of the above authors were attempting to become published
there was little option but to go through the traditional corporate publishing
houses. Self publishing then was expensive and much disparaged, being mockingly
referred to as ‘the vanity press.’
Today, authors who want to become published can self publish
without it costing them a penny and it is no longer a complicated process, so
long as you are at least marginally computer and internet literate.
In traditional publishing, if the publishing house decides to
publish the book, they buy the rights from the writer and pay them an advance
on future royalties. The publisher will then provide the funds and expertise to
design and package the book, print, market and distribute the finished book to
the public.
When I decided to self publish, in effect I became a publisher and
all of those responsibilities became mine. Being a real control freak though,
that really appealed to me. I chose the cover design (a combination between my
daughter’s amazing photographic work and my skill on Photoshop). My husband (a
teacher and examiner) proofread it for me, and I took on the responsibility of marketing
and distributing the book, with a little help from a friendly book
blogger/publicist and Amazon of course.
In the old ‘Vanity Press’ days I would have had to decide on the
number of copies to print, which may have resulted in stacks of unsold books
gathering dust in the shed! Fortunately, the Print on Demand (POD) technology
now used by Createspace and other self-publishing companies means that authors
only print as many as they need and generally with little or no upfront fee.
Another reason I decided to go the self publishing route was the time
factor. With traditional publishing, a manuscript can take years to become a
book. Whereas with self-publishing, depending on the company, as soon as your
book is complete you can have it published as an e-book within minutes and in
print within a few days, again, with little or no upfront cost.
A downside to self publishing though is that there is no lucrative
advance payment from a publishing house, which means that, (a) you are unlikely
to be able to live on the proceeds of your talent for quite a while, if ever, and
(b) because of this you will have to fit your writing in around your ‘day job’,
which is far from ideal, especially if like me, your ‘day job’ is quite
demanding and you have been seriously bitten by the writing bug.
Perhaps my biggest pull to take the self-publishing route however,
was the level of control it affords the author.
I have already mentioned that I’m a control freak. I had previously read
some horror stories where an author's joy at selling a manuscript had quickly
turned into despair when an over-zealous editor at a publishing house ripped
his manuscript to shreds until the original storyline was almost unrecognisable.
Also the publishers can withdraw your book from print whenever they feel the
need, and that is then the end of your journey and the end of your royalties
(which are miniscule anyway, around 7 – 10% on most books and 25% on e-books).
With self-publishing, the author gets to control the manuscript
contents, the design, and appearance, as well as where the book is marketed and
distributed, even how much it retails for! Most importantly to me though, was
the guarantee that my book will never go out of print, they will always be available,
earning money and gaining more readers year on year and the royalties are
higher too, up to 70% on kindle e-book sales.
Do I secretly wish I could be published by a traditional
publisher? For one reason only, and that
is recognition. Though some self published books are gaining recognition and
indeed there are some very successful indie authors out there now, there is
still a kind of stigma associated with self publishing and some people don’t
accept you as being a ‘real’ author until you have been published by one of the
big publishing houses. This may be the fault of some ‘authors’ who publish work
that, not to put a too finer point on it, looks like they knocked it up in a
weekend or in some cases an evening after a curry and seven pints of lager.
My book took me two years to write and went through seven drafts
before I was happy enough with it to let my husband proof read it, and it still
is not perfect! (Authors always find fault with their own work – even J. K.
Rowling wished she had done some things differently – like marry Harry to
Hermione for example!)
If there were fewer ‘curry night’ books then maybe indie
publishing would have a better name. So if you are thinking of writing a book
for self publishing, please be professional about it, not only will your book
be more successful, but it will elevate peoples’ perception of self publishing
and enable other indie authors be taken more seriously.
So what may the future hold for me? Well there is a long list of well
known authors who became successful through first self publishing their
‘offspring’, so maybe I will join the ranks of the following (I wonder how many
of these you realised were originally indie authors?).
John Grisham, wrote his first novel, A Time to Kill in 1989. After 28 rejections, he published 5,000
copies through a small private publisher, the rest is history.
Beatrix Potter's The Tales
of Peter Rabbit, was rejected several times so she self-published in 1901.
Amanda Hocking self published 17 novels as e-books, selling more
than a million copies. In 2011, St. Martin's Press bought the rights the Trylle trilogy, and for a new
four-book series, Watersong, for a
reported two million dollars.
The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer was self published in 1931 and
yet still sells 100,000 copies each year.
Recently self published books such as Fifty Shades of Grey have
even climbed to the top of best seller lists, so I am going to persevere and maybe
one day my name will be added to the list above.... it really is a beautiful
baby, honestly.
Karen
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