Self-publishing is cool. Or so almost everyone says. TVWriter™ is all gung-ho about it too. Here’s some helpful info to help all of us write/publish in 2014, courtesy of A Guy What Noze:
by Nathan Bransford
It’s been about a month and a half since I self-published How to Write a Novel: 47 Rules for Writing a Stupendously Awesome Novel That You Will Love Forever. Both the e-book and print editions are out, the reviews are coming in, and so far I’ve sold more than 1,500 copies. In the past month the rate of sale has picked up every week, which is really exciting to see.
Here’s the most stupidly surprising thing I learned about self-publishing: It’s really, really easy.
I say “stupidly surprising” because I feel like I should have realized this, and I’m obviously pretty behind the curve here considering how many people have embraced self-publishing and had a lot of success doing it.
But there’s something about the publication process that seemed so daunting to me before I started. So many things to think about. So hard to get the word out. All those nuts and bolts that I’ve been glad for my publisher to handle.
At the end of the day, it just wasn’t that hard. There are really only 6 things to worry about:
1. Writing the darn thing
This was by far the hardest part. When I started writing How to Write a Novel, I thought it was going to be a polished collection of blog posts. I had written so many posts over the years, surely I could just assemble it into book form?
I started stitching together blog posts… and it read like a collection of a blog posts. It didn’t read like a book. There were a ton of holes. And it kind of sucked.
So I stated over. Short of the last chapter (10 Commandments for the Happy Writer), I extensively rewrote everything I originally sourced from the blog, and I added a lot of new material that’s exclusively available in the book.
It was way harder and took a lot longer than I expected. I thought it was going to take a month. It took a year. Whoops.
Read it all (it’s really, really helpful!)