Self Publishing

Sharon Kizziah-Holmes came to the meeting of Springfield Writer's Guild and talked to us about self-publishing. She runs PaperBack Press which is a self-publishing company along with a few other ventures. I thought about self-publishing before; Xlibris sends me emails still from when I got my friend to publish through them. They're hoping to get me too. I alway thought self-publishing was too expensive and I wanted the thrill of an editor saying I was the best thing since white bread. :)

Anyway, I'm thinking about self-publishing when I finish Earth. Everyone talks about the rejections they got and you don't get that with self-publishing.  Of course you don't get advances either! 

The royalties are higher with self-publishing as well.

I don't know which way I really want to go. Both have cons and pros that make them attractive. So I'll just have to finish my book and maybe I'll try both ways.  Go the traditional and if that don't work try self-publishing or maybe I'll self-publish my first book and do the traditional with my second. I have 4 in the series after all. Not all plotted out completely but fleshed out enough to say I got the general ideas down. Anyway, Sharon got me thinking about self-publishing and it seemed affordable for someone on a limited budget like me.

However, I need to get my story done and editted before I think about even self-publishing, although Sharon has the Manuscript editted before she does anything else with it.  I need a couple of beta readers to go behind me and clean up my mess. I edit myself as I go but I don't know all the rules and spelling was never my strong point. Thank god for spell check. 

More and more I'm thinking about self-publishing, but I'm still wanting that acknowledgement from Editors that says I'm great. I think we all want that. We put our heart and soul into our work and we want that acknowledgement from people other than our family and friends who might be bias, whether they are or aren't.  We want the public to read our book and gush.  And buy our next book, of course!

Whether you go for self-publishing or the traditional route, once your book is out there, you can say you're a published author.  And that is what we all want; to be published. To have bragging rights. :)