Why Self-Publish

Drawing of a printing press by Brad Johnston

Why self-publish? I can’t answer that question for anyone but myself.

I’ve dreamed of getting a fat contract with a big New York City publisher. There would be hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of readers for a book I wrote. I’d buy a house in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I’d be surrounded by gardenias and bougainvillea and camellias. And I’d have coffee and beignets from Café du Monde every morning for the rest of my life, and sometimes late at night, too. Even more importantly than that, I wanted a book on the shelf in the public library of Edmond, Oklahoma.

I knew I could write. And I’ve never had problems thinking of story ideas. As an English major from before the 4th Grade I had no problem with grammar or punctuation. And as much as I loved reading the dictionary, spelling errors were merely opportunities.

But, and a very big but it was. I was not satisfied that the skills I had were the skills necessary to produce an extended plot and develop characters while sustaining that plot. Skills require training whether you want to repair watches, grind lenses, or build houses. And I wanted to write a novel. So I found a teacher. In my case it was and is William Bernhardt. (www.williambernhardt.com)

I went to class, paid attention, argued, fought, and rebelled every step of the way. Most importantly, I learned.

And I wrote.

Then came the wall. You runners out there, know what I’m talking about. For me, that wall looked like a very nice person sitting across the table waiting patiently for me to pitch my book. Damn. If I wanted to be a salesman or had any talents along that line I’d be in real estate or insurance. And guess what, a writer cannot get to the big publishers, except through an agent. Talk about camels and needles’ eyes.

To make matters worse, I had no track record. A few poems, some newspaper work, and lots of government correspondence. But no book length fiction. Not to mention that I’m in my sixties. I’ve heard that most writers can be expected to have a productive lifespan of 15 years. And here I was asking an agent to invest in me with indefinite prospects for financial reward over a foreshortened number of years. This is, after all, the way they make their living. They have mortgages and children in college. I understand.

Luckily for me at my ripe old age, I came of age at the right time for the self-publishing author. Traditional publishing is in flux. It’s come up against its own wall in this digital age and is having to reinvent itself.

It looks like now, with print on demand and ebooks we don’t have to rely on the deep pockets of the big publishers. DIY has arrived for writers.

Join me on my journey. Tomorrow I’ll discuss the nuts and bolts of self-publishing. As I am discovering them.