All I can say is - AWESOME!!!

After a rough couple of weeks, this has cheered me right up!

Thoughts About Self-Publishing

I recently went to a social networking event with my better half. The speaker was from "Blurb", a self-publishing company. They will publish anything from a wedding photo book ,to a house wife's (or husband's, I don't discriminate) book of recipes, to an aspiring author's novel.

This got me thinking about the merits of self-publishing and whether or not I could pull it off. Obviously, as a Children's Writer, I probably couldn't self-publish, but what about my other writings? For example, could I self-publish my fantasy fiction novel? At roughly $3.50 per book it seems cheap enough, but what else is involved?

I guess the first stumbling block is editing. We writers have read the pages again and again and again. This means that we will miss any minor mistakes. If you are as anal as I am this will really go against the grain. Months, years worth of work, only to have blemishes throughout the print. It will cost money to get a professional to edit your work, money I just do not have. 

Okay, hypothetically speaking I have printed my book and I have boxes and boxes of them sitting in my lounge room. Herein lies the next stumbling block - selling the things. How do you sell a book when you are an unknown entity? My local bookshop may purchase one or two out of sympathy, but bigger book selling companies won't touch them. It would require the company to register the book on their system', something they will not do if they cannot be guaranteed that they would be able to sell hundreds of copies of the book. It's a waste of their time and they don't need you. So I would have to sell to my unsuspecting family members, work colleagues and friends. Christmas, after all, is coming up soon. Then I would have to try and sell from my website. I would have to market myself with no backing. I may be a confident public speaker, but I'm not that good.

This all seems like an awful lot of work, and I don't exactly have a whole lot of spare time on my hands. I think self-publishing could work well for a lot of people, but I don't think it would be my own first port of call. I think I would like to do every thing I can to get it published by a set company first, and then self-publish if I knew for certain that it was the absolute best work I could produce.

I am aware that I am only considering hard copies of books here. ePublishing is a whole other ball game, and is something I have yet to look into. I guess I like the idea of having a copy of my very own book in my hands, with crisp white paper and that smell that must surely come from heaven itself. 

I would love to hear your thoughts/ideas/opinions on self-publishing.

...oh, and I did smooze well enough to be given a $50 voucher to publish my very own "Blurb" book. I am having a lot of fun putting together a photo book for my boyfriend for Christmas!

View my creepy new welcome video!