So for the last several weeks, I have been brainstorming how to make a success of this. For those of you just joining us (me), I recently pulled my book off Amazon for a variety of reasons. Mostly because I would rather throw my lot in with indie booksellers and forge my own path a bit rather than be married to Amazon. Or, as my friend Bree put it "Amazon is... Amazon."
I suppose I should point out that this isn't necessarily forever- selling books on Amazon is a pretty logical step, like selling in the Borders and Barnes & Noble of yesterday (what, B&N is still around?!). But, like those large brick and mortars, does it need to be the first step? Yes, it's a massive marketplace, but... it's a massive marketplace. How does one stand out there? Of course, there is the obvious accessibility factor- namely, that the people who find your book outside of Amazon probably want to read it on their Kindle.
So here's the plan, in any case: I am going to use this as an opportunity to clean up a few things- a few errant typos remain, so I'm going to run it through a professional proofreader, and the guys at League Entertainment are providing a new cover. In order to cover all that, my plan is to run a crowd-funding campaign, and use any monies beyond those basics to print physical copies which can then be distributed to bookstores. It will also bring about a much needed facelift to my own site.
Simple enough, right? That's the way I see it. And I stand to gain more than i do to lose- there is certainly a bit to be lost in availability, but Amazon is never going to promote my book or events, and a place like Village Books will.
Now it's a matter of building those relationships and printing books.
ICYMI:
I did a two part piece on reasons you shouldn't and should self-publish. I guess I should call it three parts, since I wrote a concluding post on the subject. If you want to see examples of people being very, very firmly entrenched in opinions, read the comments (the emails I got were even better- one from an established, traditionally-published author saying how much she liked the posts and that it had been send to her with the subject "Can you believe the NERVE of this guy?").
Good friend and author who I have long adored, E Cathrine Tobler recently released the second book in her Rings of Anubis steampunk series, called Silver and Steam, and you should go read it. Something about Egypt and steampunk scratches a major itch for me- hopefully you enjoy it too.
