A few years ago, when I was a fledgling wanna-be writer and an enthusiastic believer in “if you write something new, different, and interesting, people will like it!” Well, that it ain’t necessarily so!
There are thousands of scripts written only to be thrown in the trash or remain stored in the bottom drawer. The brave souls who had the courage to send their manuscript to a Publisher can show you that bottom drawer full of rejections.
When the phenomenon of Indie Publishing burst onto the horizon, many more writers got the courage and fortitude to dig in and learned the hard way that, although submitting stories was free, it was still not as easy as it looked. They had to learn to format their manuscript to meet a printer’s requirements!
It was a daunting task, but we dug in and learned the process! Then we were told that it should or must be professionally edited, which costs a pretty penny, actually, a lot of pennies; some could afford it, and some could not! One of the publishing companies I use will accept a doc or docx file and magically transform it into a PDF; voilà, it becomes an eBook and/or a paperback, ready for POD, and is submitted to many book sites. You can pay to have books bulk-printed, ready to sell at craft fairs. Bulk Printing isn’t terribly expensive, but shipping is horrendous, and many new companies are gaining ground.
Many more writers are doing their own thing by staging signing events. Having their books printed in bulk makes each one less expensive, but bulk printing can be costly if you don’t sell them.
The companies that display your book on their online stores take a considerable percentage of the purchase price and do not share the purchaser’s email address. Some require you to sign a contract that grants them the rights to your work. Damn, now you have to be a lawyer, too!
One company had some of my books on a used-book site! Wait, if I wasn’t getting paid, how can someone have them as used? I finally did some digging and discovered that I needed to formally sever the contract with the Corporate Office. After a little googling, I wrote a formal letter and severed that contract. My books are still on that site, but from another publisher, and appear accurate. Your books could appear on a used book site legitimately, and that isn’t a bad thing. I love it when someone reads one of my books.
The Indie publishing business is changing and is growing by leaps and bounds. Now, some of the Indie Book Stores will actually sell eBooks from their stores. It is an exciting time to write, so get to it! Put your words down on paper and do the best writing you can do, even if Grammarly or another program helps you. Not everyone can or will be a Million Dollar Seller, and some of us do not desire to, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t writing great books.
My books are available on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.
When you click on the Brenda’s Bookstore Logo, you will magically go to my new Bookstore, called Booksby/BrendaColbath, where my paperback books can be shipped worldwide!
To read my past blogs, click on “Posts”, and you can scroll the list on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com
Hope your day is filled with fun and love. See you next time…