In the past, once you had completed your first novel, you had three options. You could rely on your well-known name to get a deal, you could submit your book to dozens of agents and editors and hope for lightning to strike, or you could put the manuscript in your desk drawer and get started on your second novel.  Nowadays, you have four options: rely on your name, hope for lightning to strike, put it away, or publish it yourself. I recently went with the latter option. This post shares some of my thoughts and experiences, both cautionary and good.

1. The only way to sell books is to market them.  Perhaps this seems obvious, but it’s worth stating. About 175,000 new books are published in the U.S. each year (UNESCO keeps some unusual statistics). There is no way anyone is going to stumble upon your book without substantial marketing. And marketing is, quite simply, what a mainstream publisher does, compared to a self publisher. They have the contacts to get your book into the major chain bookstores, and to get it in front of the eyes of influential people, whether that person is a reviewer for the NYT Review of Books or one of Oprah’s producers. Ask yourself: is Stephanie Meyer really a better writer than you? I didn’t think so. But she’s got a heck of a marketing machine. Self-publishers will be happy to tell you about (and often sell you) options for promotion. But unless you are a genius at self promotion, you will spend hours and hours trying to promote yourself in front of audiences that number in the dozens.  If you are a genius at self promotion, you’ve probably already figured out how to get your manuscript in front of the right people in the first place. But if you’re like me, a semi-introvert who spends much of your free time reading or writing, eventually you will realize that the return on investment for your marketing time is not worth the effort, and you will get back to work.
2. You will lose money. I suspect most aspiring novelists don’t expect to make a living off of their first book, although we all dream of that lightning strike. When self publishing, however, you pay the publisher to get your book ready for publication, which means you start out in the hole. I’ve seen options that cost anything from a few hundred to over ten thousand dollars. At that higher price point, you do get an actual hardbound book, as well as some marketing help. So far I’ve spent a relatively modest $1500, including some non-publisher costs (website, manuscript costs, etc.).  So, considering my share of the selling price (which I didn’t get to set, by the way), I’ll be in the black after I sell my 500^th book. Wouldn’t that be nice?
3. Self published books are not printed until they are sold. As a result, the publisher does not carry a stock on hand, and they do not accept returns. On the other hand, a brick and mortar bookstore will simply not carry a book on the shelf if they cannot return it. That may be the biggest reason you are not going to get your self-published book into every Barnes and Noble. Local bookstores may be willing to stock your book, but you will have to buy the books ahead of time and be willing to take back whatever they don’t sell. On the other hand, if you’re planning on giving your closest hundred friends a copy of your book for Christmas, you may have little to lose.
4. It looks really cool to see your book in print.  This is no small thing. I can look over and there it is on a shelf, ISBN number and everything. It feels finished. I don’t feel like a pretender when somebody asks “you wrote a book?” and I say yes. In fact, it was quite a bit of fun to swap some cover and design ideas around with the creative staff, and I think the end result looks as good as any trade paperback in the bookstores. By the way, a trade paperback is what you will end up with, what the industry calls a “perfect bound” book, a book somewhat larger than a mass market paperback, printed on better paper.
5. Hire a professional proofreader. After I felt like the re-writes were good, I went back through my manuscript several times looking for simple errors. Then, after I submitted the file for formatting, I had one last chance to review it. I found 80 more errors. Since publication, I’ve been keeping a file for additional errors, as when readers say “great book, but I found three places where the punctuation is missing.” After you’ve read it a hundred times, you’re no longer actually reading it, and the mistakes just slip past you.
6. Get some kind of professional review. Let’s face it; your friends and family are going to tell you it’s the greatest thing they’ve ever read. (If they don’t say that, you either have some mean-spirited friends, or you wrote a piece of crap.) Despite the praise of those who love you, you will find yourself wondering if you really do have any talent. And let’s face it, spending another few thousand hours writing your second book is not a good use of your time if you can’t write. I submitted my manuscript to Kirkus Discoveries, a division of the Kirkus company which reviews works destined for self publication. Yes, you have to pay for the privilege, and yes, they are going to try to be positive if they can, since they are in the business of selling reviews. But it won’t be a whitewash, and you may get some valuable criticism out of it.
7. Don’t spend too much time reading “writer’s market” books and magazines. After a while, it’s just depressing. Everybody will give you pretty much the same information on how to write a query letter, for example. And I may regret saying this, but you agents: lighten up! You’d think, from reading your magazine interviews and your websites, that the last thing you wanted was for someone to actually send you a query letter or a synopsis. Talk about a self-important group of people. If you’re the type of agent who blows a gasket because someone forgot to format in Times New Roman, then you probably don’t work well with others to begin with.

And now it’s time for my shameless self-promotion paragraph. My novel, The Sword of God, is a political thriller set in the here and now. The hero is a regular guy, an anonymous government employee, without extraordinary equipment or abilities, who must nonetheless rise to the challenge of events which threaten the stability of the world. Admittedly, I haven’t single handedly re-created the genre.  But it’s pretty good, nonetheless. The aforementioned Kirkus Discoveries called it “a compelling page turner,” and said “The Sword of God reads like the work of an accomplished spy novelist.”  As with most self-published works, it is widely available only online, at Amazon, Alibris, etc. More info is available at my website:  www.swordofgodbook.com  By the way, I have no idea what the diwani calligraphy on the cover says, but a friend of mine who speaks Arabic assured me that it’s benign and not offensive.

I think I’ll send out another round of query / synopsis packets, and then be ready to move on. I’ve decided that the traditional routes to publication are the traditional routes for a good reason. So I’m going to submit more stuff to magazines and literary journals, and start building a publication record. Frankly, I think about the only thing agents or editors look at is a track record, anyway.

 So, back to work.