Tag Archives: self-publishing

SATURDAY LOVE: My current feelings (subject to change) about self-publishing

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Whatever else you might say about self-publishing, I’ve never felt so free before!

Today marks the official publication of my book SATURDAY LOVE. It’s my eighth book, my fifth self-published. I’ve gotten much better at this thing over the past couple of years, everything from formatting to editing to cover design is better now. Even my writing is improving with every book, and I say that with no false modesty whatsoever. I can’t read one of my older books without blushing a little, and I wouldn’t want to change that. If I could read them all with unfettered pride, it would mean I was standing still.

But why do I say self-publishing is freeing? Whether it’s a good thing or not (and it’s definitely more work in many ways), I can publish what I want and make my own schedule. Having done it both ways, I thought I’d give you a sample schedule for both traditional and self-publishing.

SELF
Write
Finish book and set aside.
Write something else.
Return to first book, rewrite and set aside.
Contact editor and get quote.
Send book off for editing.
Write.
Get edits back. Lots of great suggestions! Pay editor.
Rewrite and make better.
Set aside.
Write something else.
Pull out book and read over making small changes and edits.
Decide it’s good and set a publishing date.
Write blurb.
Contact a cover artist, tell him/her exactly what you want.
Get back cover and be pleased. Pay cover artist promptly because you want to use them again.
Submit everything to CreateSpace.
Decide to go over one more time. Crap. How did you leave that apostrophe out?
Fix apostrophe and resubmit everything to CreateSpace.
Begin telling friends, posting on FaceBook, Tweeting, etc.
Publication day!

TRADITIONAL:
Submit book.
Wait
Wait
Wait
Wait (begin checking email obsessively)
Wait
Wait (despair of ever hearing back)
Wait
Finally!
Open email with great trepidation to find a refusal.
Break smartphone/computer/etc.
Drink wine.
Resubmit book.
(repeat above process)
Finally!
Open email and rejoice to acceptance.
Wait
Wait
Contact with editor who gives you rough schedule of editing process and publishing schedule and sends you worksheets that will help the art department and blurb writers get a handle on what your story is about.
Complete worksheet and return.
Wait
Wait
Wait
Get first edits.
Despair that there’s still so much wrong with your story.
Get to work.
Complete edits in much less time than is given and return.
Wait
Wait
Wait
Get second round of edits.
Complete edits much faster this time because you and your editor understand each other better.
Return edits.
Wait
Wait
Wait
Final round of edits.
Complete and return.
Wait
Wait
Wait
Copy edits arrive, marked up by two or three additional editors you don’t know.
Crap. There’s still so much wrong! How is this possible.
Fix and return.
Wait
Wait
When will you get to see your cover? What’s up with that? And the blurb?
Wait
Wait
Finally! The cover arrives. The artist is very proud. He/she has a cover they know you are going to love!
It’s not what you’d imagined. But how do you tell him/her that? And it’s not bad, just not what you’d pictured.
Blurb arrives. It’s pretty good. They’ve taken your original idea and spiced it up with some catch words and phrases designed to make readers LOVE the idea of reading your book.
The cover’s really not that far off. And what do you know, anyway? You point out a few small things that could be changed.
The artist replies that those things are set, makes a very minor change and you’re both okay with it.
Wait
Galleys arrive. You read eagerly, certain your book can be nothing but perfect now.
Crap. Who left out that apostrophe? Was it you or one of the copy editors? Is it too late to fix it?
Decide it’s too small to bother editor with.
Decide it’ll bug you forever if you don’t.
Query editor about it and be reassured you’re not being a pest and they’ll fix the apostrophe right away.
Relax.
Wait
Wait
Wait
Get advance copy of your book. Start querying review sites that haven’t already been hit by publisher about reviewing your book.
Wait
Wait
Wait
Publication Day!

In so many ways, the process is the same. The difference is, the only person I have to wait for is myself, really. The editor and cover artist (and I’ve done self-publishing without either) never take long to do their jobs, and because I hire them, I know about how long that will take. So, in the end, I can publish what I want when I want to publish it. But I’m out here more or less alone, except for you guys, my readers.

SATURDAY LOVE is now out there. Feel free to give it some love. And if you’re worried about reading the sequel without reading the first book, DUCKS IN A ROW is free for the Kindle today. Do me a favor and go check it out, then let your friends know, too.

It all began two years ago on a winter afternoon…

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Saturday Love Final CoverThis year I will self-publish another book on January 1. I’ve done it for the past two years, and I now think of it as my way of renewing my pledge to keep on keeping on at the writing and publishing thing. But it does have a story…

It was after Christmas, everyone was content, and for once I wasn’t running anywhere or doing anything. That’s when I decided to take the leap into self publishing. I already had two ebooks out (Secrets of the Lotus and Winter Solstice) through Lyrical Press. And I had this third manuscript just kind of hanging out on my computer desktop. (Stephen King calls them “trunk novels”, and the description is pretty apt. Because you don’t know what to do with them, you tuck them away somewhere, but every now and then you open the trunk and have a peek.)

Weeds and Flowers coverThat was how Weeds and Flowers came to be published. Half young adult romance, half coming of age novel, a sprinkling of mystery and a pinch of autobiography, Weeds and Flowers doesn’t fit in any particular genre, but I always knew it was a good story. Even if it is a tough sell. I first published it on New Year’s Day 2012 through Kindle Direct Publishing, although it’s gone through revisions and is now on its third edition (and available in paperback as well as ebook).

Ducks_CoverLast year I found myself in a similar situation. Kids happy, husband happy, everyone content to stay in for an afternoon…and lo and behold, I had another trunk novel just begging to be published. That’s how Ducks in a Row found its way into the published world through the magic of CreateSpace and KDP on New Year’s Day 2013.

This year, I’m doing it again, but I’m doing it on purpose. Saturday Love is the sequel to Ducks in a Row, the story of Will and what happens to him after the events of Ducks. In Saturday Love, you’ll become better acquainted with Will’s loving and lovable family, including his handsome brother Patrick (the one who coins the phrase “Saturday love” to describe the way he feels about his new girlfriend), his younger sister Lisa (who may yet have her own story…) and his beautiful, strong mother Anne, the matriarch of the Hubbard clan. And yes, it’s a romance, so there’s a new lady in Will’s life. You’ll be able to find Saturday Love on Amazon and many other online retailers in paperback and on Amazon for Kindle on January 1, 2014.

Print Party Preview Time! Plus, enter to win your own PRINT copy of Ducks in a Row!

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Happy Valentine’s Day! Don’t forget to leave me a comment to enter to win one of three proof copies I’m giving away! In the meantime, here’s an excerpt! (Warning: Adult language. Just once—or twice—but still.)

Cam watched her sister leave knowing she had a fight on her hands and it was her fault. She glanced around at the dirty dishes still on the table and knew she should begin loading them into the dishwasher, but she had something to do first and she needed her strength to do it. Cam glanced at the clock on her cell phone. Six o’clock. Stan would be done with work, probably at the bar having a drink with some of the boys. She bit her lip and decided it was time. She needed to let him know she wasn’t home and wouldn’t be coming back.

He answered on the second ring, laughter in his voice and the sound of a jukebox in the background. “Hey, baby, where are you? It’s payday and we’re celebrating. Come on down.”

“I’m not there.” She wondered what it was about him that made her so tongue-tied, even now. Nearly a year after they’d met and begun dating, the sound of his voice could melt her knees, short out her brain and make it almost impossible to speak a complete sentence.

He laughed. “I know you’re not here, babe. I’m trying to fix that. C’mon down, I want you.”

I want you. The words echoed in her heart. “No, you don’t get it, Stan. I’m not there and I’m not coming back. I’m here now and I don’t want to see you again.” She closed her eyes with the effort of saying the last words. How could she sound so heartless and indecipherable at the same time?

After a moment of listening to the jukebox play, in which she pictured him sitting at a table with a beer in front of him, his chair tilted back and his long legs splayed in front of him, he finally spoke. “Hold on a sec.”

She heard voices and a door slamming and then silence. She knew he was standing in the middle of the dirt and gravel parking lot of the little dive bar he loved in Brunswick, Georgia. She knew he was holding his cell phone against his ear, searching for a way to reply to her. “Cam, what’s going on?”

“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep pretending I can be your little wife.”

“Did I ask you to be my wife?”

“You know what I mean. I’m sick of the whole thing. I had to get away.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at my sister’s in North Carolina.”

After a moment’s silence, he burst out laughing. “You don’t want to be my wife, but you run away to suburban hell? Are you serious? I’ve heard you talk about your sister and her husband and how uptight they are. Cam, are you feeling all right?”

“Cut it out.”

“No, seriously, check and see if you have a fever. I’m really worried about you, babe.”

“Cut…it…out! I’m serious. I’m not going to stay here permanently. Just ‘til I figure out what to do next.”

“I’ll fucking tell you what to do next. Come home. Come home now. I don’t want to live without you, and I’m pretty sure you don’t mean any of these things you’re saying. Come home and tell me what’s really wrong.”

If only she could. But it would ruin everything and she’d just end up back here without him, anyway. At least this way she could do it on her own terms.
“Cam?” His voice was stern. “Come home.”

“I’m sorry.” She closed her eyes again. She hadn’t meant to say that. She hadn’t meant to apologize, as if she had anything to really be sorry for, even if she did. “I can’t.”

She hung up and thought about him standing alone in the parking lot. He’d cuss, he might throw the phone and break it, and then he’d go inside and get drunk. Stinking drunk. Maybe he’d sleep with that little barmaid that’d been flirting with him for a while. Cam tried not to care.

Happy Print Party! Welcome me to the world of books actually IN print and win a free proof copy!

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Yay! It’s that day…Print Day! Capital letters, please. Surely an important day in my career, even if it is the result of self-publishing. Today, you can buy a novel by ME with MY name on the cover! Yippee! Have a peek:

Ducks_Cover

So far, it’s for sale at CreateSpace and Amazon. So go buy it now! Or if you’d like to go the more economical way (or just flat out prefer ebooks like I do), check out the Kindle version. If you like it, leave me a review, please! I love hearing from readers. You can even email me your praises at michellegflye@gmail.com.

All that said, how about a giveaway to celebrate? In the course of perfecting my book (and you’re still going to find editing mistakes in it, trust me!), I went through three proofs. Proof 1 doesn’t even have page numbers, and one of the characters is misnamed (oops!). Proof 2 is pretty close to as perfect as I got it, however, I did change the back pages and my bio a bit for Proof 3. To celebrate my book’s print birthday, I’m giving away one signed copy of each proof. All you have to do is leave me a comment right here!

I’ll be back later to give you a little taste of the book, but in the meantime, here’s the blurb to whet your appetite:

Cady Summers thinks she has all her ducks in a row: great house, beautiful family. Then her estranged twin sister Cam shows up…pregnant. Envious of her sister’s condition and lonely with a teenage daughter and a workaholic husband, Cady’s life no longer seems to have the perfect order she has always cherished.

A recovering drug addict and absentee mother of two, Cam Taylor has never had any order in her life. Afraid of his reaction to her pregnancy, Cam flees the man she loves, seeking refuge in the only home she still knows.

Can the love between the two sisters provide a healing balm for the wounds of her scarred marriage or will Cady seek solace in the arms of another man? Can the reunion with her sister give Cam the courage she needs to face the man she loves or will she let her past mistakes come between them?

In with both feet and hoping self-publishing isn’t one of the deadly sins.

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I recently published this picture on Twitter and Facebook:

Ducks book_large

I captioned it “A preview of things to come”. And yes, that’s my name on the front of an actual physical book. It’s just a proof copy for me to find all my errors (and there are a few), but when I give CreateSpace the word, it becomes real. It’ll really be for sale. You can order it from Amazon and it will arrive in a box. Huh.

Back in the days when self-publishing was called “vanity” publishing, it was, perhaps, the deadly sin of writing. I’ve dipped my toes into the swirling whirlpool of self-publishing by creating Kindle e-books from two of my manuscripts that I couldn’t find homes for elsewhere, but I never considered print-on-demand before. Recently, however, I was encouraged to jump in with both feet and see where the whirlpool takes me, and I decided to do it. I figured, hey, if nothing else, I’ll see my name on the front of my book (I think I see where the “vanity” comes in).

Yesterday the proof arrived. Proof of my vanity? Maybe. But it’s kind of neat to hold that book in my hands and know it’s something I made. From beginning to end, I created it. I took the picture that’s on the front cover. I edited it (and it takes courage to admit that, because it’s going to have some mistake). I built this book like my kids build spaceships with Legos. It’s not quite finished yet. I still have to make certain I don’t need to reformat anything else, and then I jump in, feet first, and find out what it’s really like being a self-published author.

Whoops, I did it again! Another foray into the world of self-publishing…

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First of all, happy new year! In spite of all evidence and predictions to the contrary, we rang in 2013 last night. Which means we still have a chance to make this world a better place with what we do. I hope I’m accomplishing that by adding more books to it because I spent much of yesterday doing exactly that and my new book Ducks in a Row went live right about midnight last night. By the time anyone reads this, I’ll have the cover posted in the feature area to your left, but I’m very proud of this cover (designed by me), so I’ll post it here, too:

Ducks in a Row Cover

Okay, so that’s what I did yesterday, why did I do it? My former venture into the world of self-publishing may have won me critical acclaim, but it sure didn’t make me rich. And self-publishing a book, even the way I do it through Kindle Direct Program, is not an easy thing, and it is nerve-wracking. After all, my book was never professionally edited. My readers will have to do with my editing skills. Admittedly, I’m not totally untalented in that area, but even I will admit a professional editor adds a lot to my stories.

But I did it anyway. Why? My only answer…again…is that I love this story. I wanted it to be a book. And when I couldn’t find a publisher for it (it’s really more women’s fiction than romance and it leans toward the sweet instead of the spicy), I decided, what the hell? This story wants to be told. I want this story to be a book, but a book needs readers. I found some readers for Weeds and Flowers. A lot of them, actually. Maybe I can do the same for Ducks in a Row. At any rate, it’s worth a try.

Plus, since I designed the cover, I got to make my name pretty big. Nice, huh? I didn’t go Stephen King big for design reasons (I wanted everything linear on the cover because of the title), but it’s still pretty big… Still dreaming of the day when my name is bigger than the title itself.

Self-published and proud of it: Stop squelching the new voices.

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There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt. — Audre Lorde

I’m really trying not to get angry now. If you want to know why, go read this article: Are Self-Pubbed Authors Killing the Publishing Industry? I actually read the article yesterday and let it sit for a day so I could be sure after cooling off that I didn’t see her point, but after reading it again this morning, I realized I’m still hot. So here I go on my soapbox.

Seriously? KILLING the industry? You want to know what’s killing the industry? Look a little deeper. Look at the agents who don’t want to take a chance on cross-genre works and new names. And the editors who won’t even look at a new author unless they’re represented by an agent. The publishing industry has become so intertwined, it’s almost impossible to get anything published the traditional route unless you’re grandfathered in.

Of course, there are exceptions. Everybody knows J.K. Rowling’s slush pile acceptance story. But that was more than fifteen years ago. More recently, of course, there was the Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James (what’s with the British authors with initials thing?) breakthrough, but let’s please remember that that started out as fanfiction, and was originally published online. So I’m not certain you can claim Ms. James went the traditional route at all.

I have self-published a book. I’m considering self-publishing more. And the reason I’m doing it is because I’m a writer, and I have every intention of continuing to write and be published, whether I have to do it myself or not. And to promote my books, I will do web tours and give away Kindles and Nooks, even if “Traditionally published authors aren’t stooping to these tactics.” Traditionally published authors don’t have to. Their publishers take care of publicity for them.

I have said before and will say again that the way for new authors to get their words out there is to go through small e-publishers. With that route, you get the benefit of a professional editor (believe me, it helps). However, I also know there are books that even indie publishers aren’t going to consider. And for those, Smashwords and Kindle Direct Publishing will continue to be desirable routes for writers. And if we want to sell our words for 99 cents, then traditional publishers need to suck it up and stop complaining. Buyer beware. If you pay 99 cents for a book, you might not enjoy it. It probably hasn’t been professionally edited. It may have typos and formatting errors.

On the other hand, it might be brilliant. It might be a new voice with something to say that you might enjoy hearing. At any rate, it cost less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks, so what do you have to lose?

If you’d like to try my 99 cent self-published 5-star on Amazon book, here’s a link: Weeds and Flowers. And my self-designed cover, which I am very proud of: