Pages


20121122


A hearty "Congratulations!" to Lucy Pireel (indie author of soon-to-be released collection of twisted fairy tales, Red Gone Bad), who's already figured out my blogging pattern! "Every eleven days at exactly 11 hours,she said, which is absolutely correct.

Kudos to her, and as promised, she receives the mock cyber-puppy!

Golden Retriever 
Bailey-boo, the mock cyber-puppy!


Word of the week: plethora \ˈple-thə-rə\ (hear it!) - noun: excess, superfluity, profusion, abundance - Merriam-Webster Dictionary


Indie Publishing: Big, Bad, and Ugly?

Once upon a time, there was a darkness.

And within this darkness lurked something so thick, and so foul, and so feral, it frightened everyone with roars of failure, threats of strife, and spam on rye. And it reeked—oh, how it reeked! Shady dealings, broken promises, stigmas that could never be washed off in a lukewarm bath with soap and water.

Those who dared to venture near the darkness were lured into a labyrinthine lair, bewildered, then chewed upon, sucked dry of their lifelong funds, and spit out as a carcass forever branded poor and naïve, while the creature within laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Oh, how everyone trembled! “No!” they'd cry in unison to those who dared to venture near the vile darkness. “Never, never go near that! It will devour you—alive!”

Thus, they all shied like skittish horses, for fear of losing all they had gained and all they had yet to accomplish sat too precious within their hearts . . . until a different creature crawled out from this darkness, one that no longer fed on the impatience of the naïve, and it glowed with the light of more feasible possibilities. . . .

* * *
Ah . . . indie publishing.

All right, so maybe it wasn't always a horrid creature skulking around in the dark. But if memory serves, used to be very few writers wanted to touch self-publishing with a fifty-foot pole; it was considered a last-ditch effort of the desperate writer willing to pay a subsidy to publish his book. (Yippee!) And it was expensive. (Damn!) Thousands of dollars (Ouch!) to create hundreds of hard copies (Only hundreds?!) that may or may not have been sold anywhere—ever. Oh sure, a few to friends and family, and friends of the family, and families of the friends, etc. and so on . . . but to bookstores and other distribution outlets? Pfft. Who had that kind of chump change to throw away? “Oh, gee, here's a random two thousand dollars. Let's be all crazy-like and take a chance down this dead end street. Whoopee!”

But the landscape of self-publishing has changed over the years—a lot.

Now, I'm not going to spout off all there is know about indie publishing . . . because I can't. An indie newbie shouldn't. (Ooo, taboo.) Besides: 1) it's been discussed to death, all over the place and everywhere; b) there's a plethora of more-in-depth information than I could ever “spout off,” all over the place and everywhere; and iii) writing this blog post has proven just as bewildering as when I turned a “keen eye” to indie publishing for the first time (1); my thoughts were all over the place and everywhere, as in:

Ach! Where the heck do I start?!”

Writing. Editing. Proofreading. Formatting. Cover art. Cover design. Uploading. Downloading. Backloading. Sideloading. Promoting. Pricing. Writing. Editing. Proofreading. Connecting with authors. Connecting with readers. Connecting the dots. Blogging. Creating a publishing website. Writing. Editing. Proofreading. Goodreads. Smashwords. Amazon Kindle. Nook. Front matter. Back matter. Dark matter. Anti-matter. Arrgh! Did it all even really matter?! . . . Writing. Editing. Proofreading. *whew*

But as I squinted deeper and deeper into my cracked and clouded crystal sphere of success versus failure, I could see . . . yes, it does matter. All of it, and it's all tied together.

Like one enormous rubber band ball. *grumble*

So that left me with: “Where the heck do I start?” (← note the lack of colloquial double punctuation there; calmer, yes, calmer. . . .) And the answer is (all together now!): “At the beginning!”

*stares, dumbfounded, at the rubber band ball of indie publishing*

Um . . . yeah . . . right. . . .

For those of you familiar with circles or spheres or any other round things, you know these objects don't have distinct beginnings or endings, so my starting at the beginning of indie publishing was as futile as my trying to morph into a fish.

But! I did learn two very important things. One: true indie publishing is distinct from subsidy publishing.
  • Indie publishing: the author retains control over his project, rights and all, and chooses who to pay and who to use as editors, proofreaders, cover artists and designers, etc; i.e. he is the publisher.
  • Subsidy publishing: the author not only pays a company to publish his project with no say in who handles what, but the company also claims various rights to the work; i.e. they are the publisher.
. . . and as one who thrives on maintaining control over everything that involves my projects, full-length or short, the prospect of indie publishing was far too tempting to resist. Thus, I started there, at . . . um . . . well, somewhere in the middle of the rubber band ball—snap-twang!and I'll merely fumble my way through it by trial and error, then report it all here, so you can laugh, and laugh, and laugh, whilst I suffer dreadful misery and woe from within those infuriating tangles of stretchiness. *sigh and sob*

Oh, the second thing I learned? Long blog posts put people to sleep. Good night.

(1) A deliberate semi-misnumbering, yes. Good of you to notice.

*  *  *
Photo credit for gargoyle - Bichuas (E. Carton) – Flickr Photo Sharing – Creative Commons License

10 comments:

  1. Yay! to me! I've won the cyber-poopy! And what a great post it is. Twatted it and thus shared on the evil book of faces, becasue for some reason, when I twit it goes to my timeline too.
    Well, done Kim! If all your posts are going to be like this, people can't help but flock to your blog in throngs and massive numbers and they'll have to wait their turn because the server will be down from the sheer number of people wanting to read on here. :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Lucy! Yep, you won the cyber-puppy. :) And for those who wonder . . . nope, I gave no hints. :D You figured it out.

      And thank you. :) Takes me forever to write one post. Lol! I think I fuss . . . a lot.

      Delete
  2. Great start! I'm trying to figure out now how I can list you on my blog. I list blovels I'm reading, and I have advertisements on the bottom, but I'm begining to think ads on the bottom might be a worthless use of space. I mean if I was that popular, I'd have book deals and wouldn't need to advertise.

    Okay, that settles it, I'm going to have a space down there for websites I frequent, and I'll put this one on there. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Edward! :) I'm still reading your blovel, and it's evolving very, very nicely. Very nicely, indeed. I do suggest anyone who wants to be entertained in frequent postings, to read yours, and I hope those who visit my "Ether" will browse others' blogs, as well.

      Not sure if you'd gotten to see my first posting here. Last time, you said you could only see the header. A lot of people had that trouble, oddly enough.

      Delete
  3. I'm looking forward to your next post! This cleared up the confuzzliness of indie publishing and subsidy publishing for me. Yay! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, Elze! Yeah, I was, (yet wasn't), totally surprised by the differences. Once I discovered that I'd have complete control over all aspects of my projects, I was sold on the idea. :D

      Delete
  4. Cyber Puppy, yay! Fun read too :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ha! Finally found the Blog! And what a treat it is, Kimberly! :D

    Man, I feel like a doo-doo brain for not searching it out until now on Caendoria. Anywho, love the work!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Brian! It's nice to see you. Yay, you've finally found it! :D Thank you very much for the compliments, and I hope you drop by again for another read, and to browse through the blogs listed on my blogroll. Mmm. . .

    ReplyDelete