Wednesday, July 6, 2011

If money is the root of all evil, then self-publishing is the root of all frustration.

      My apologies for blogging so late in the day, but the reason is that I wished to see the results of posting my free book on smashwords;  The Facebook Killer: Part One. So far, after being live for eight hours, there have been 45 downloads. Not a bad result, if I say so myself. No revenue but hey! It's 45 people who are now reading my work. I hope to God the reviews follow. After which I hope to sell the second installment of the book (for a small fee). I checked out the price of pencils today, alas, my booksales don't afford me this little luxury yet.
    So! let's see what my experiment has accomplished in the past four days of operation. Well, in a nutshell, I have lost a shitload of money on internet connection fees, but my distribution (note I don't mention sales) has risen from to 50. By this I mean that 50 people are now aware of / reading my work.

    During my short quest to better myself, I have come upon certain opinions and methods.

1) There still appears to be some bitterness and, dare I say, friction between the views of "real authors" and "internet authors". Now don't get me wrong. I sent my manuscripts, synopsis, cover letter and pride off to several agents. I had some very nice rejections, personally composed by the executioner themselves and not your standard "sorry this is a load of old bollocks and we wish you luck...ha ha...in trying to find a blind, deaf and dumb literary agent to help you realise your fortune." I wanted to be published, properly. I still do. But my God! When you still have to print out your first three chapters and buy document boxes and put it all in a padded envelope, that you later find out isn't big enough, so you have to go back to the shop and then include a stamp-addressed envelope etc..etc. Yes! I would love to have an agent and a publisher. It would give me status as a "real author". But I have to ask where are their heads?
    Now before anyone shoots me down here, I know quite a bit about publishers, ten years ago some clients of mine emptied over £2 million pounds from one of London's biggest's publishers online accounts. My point being? You can have your cake and eat it. No one writes a manuscript on a typewriter nowadays, well very few. Why doesn't a proactive publisher or agent, open a seperate wing to allow us pathetic beggars to self publish with them. "Sell enough online and we'll put you in print!" Prove to us you are a good writer and we'll put our faith in you. It's a win-win situation. The crossover point has obviously been passed. "Real" books are available in ebook format. There is definitely scope for more broadmindedness in the industry. Which brings me onto my next point.
2) Regulating standards and procedures of self-published authors: I recently read several articles regarding an ebook written by Louise Voss and Mark Edwards, Catch Your Death, where they used the subtitle, (For fans of Dan Brown & Stieg Larsson). This was one reason it hurtled to the number one place in the charts. Alas, if one reads many of the reader reviews it was underserving of the prestige. A great stunt, but in my opinion, downright fraudulent. This is a trick I refuse to try in my experiment. It misleads the buyer and will ultimately lead to a lack of trust.
    I have, sitting in front of me now, a book, which I bought in a hurry from Heathrow airport a few years ago.The cover has, in huge letters, the name DAN BROWN, followed by, if you like your thrillers as fast, furious and unputdownable as Dan Brown, then we thought you'd enjoy .......... this book, which actually has f+ck all to do with Dan Brown. I felt ripped off.

RANT OVER!  170 days to go!

For now, I am returning to my mad scientist's lab to work on future promotion of my books. Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment.

author@mlstewart.com

1 comment:

Nixie Turner said...

I just wanted to say that I was enjoying your blog. I wanted to give you a bit of a helping hand so I 'tweeted' your link, and another of your followers replied to me. So the band is growing.

Good luck - I am watching with interest.

Nixie