So, it's Saturday night, I'm watching the "Three Stooges" with my family and surfing the internet's many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many Literary Agent, Publishing House, and Author websites. I've come to a few conclusions, discovered a few absolute truths if you will, after reading all of the posts, advice, forums, and ads. Every Literary Agent is unreachable, the Publishing Houses don't actually publish anything, every Author is the next J.K. Rowling, just waiting to be discovered, and if I am willing to give just $1,000.00 to one of the companies in the ads they will find me an agent, get me published, and make me the next J.K. Rowling within a week or less. Those are all facts if you are willing to believe everything on the internet.
Take a second and go ahead and do a search on google for anything related to writing, how to get published, find an agent or anything anywhere near those topics. Seriously, go ahead and do a search, I'll wait... Ok, your back. See what I mean? All of the truly successful authors, although I've never heard of any of them, are completely willing to sell you or anyone else their book which contains all the secrets to how they got an agent, got published, and became the most successful author (that I've never heard of) ever.
There are a million (that may be a little exaggeration) forums and sites on how to write, how to promote your work, and how to become a huge success. Those forums and sites are all full of aspiring author's asking for and giving each other advice. Now, I'm not saying that some of them aren't proposing decent ideas, but I have yet to see anything that common sense didn't already tell me to do. Here's an example of how the forums go:
Can'tSpellGrammar(CSG): I am working on my first book and have the first chapter done. Is there anyone out there willing to read it and tell me what they think?
Can'tSpellGrammarEither(CSGE): I'll read it for you and give you my opinion, just email it to me. I have written three books that are supernatural/romance fiction works(translation - I, like everyone else, think I can copy the success of Stephenie Meyer and the Twilight series).
CSG: Great, thanks. I sent it to you. What can I do to get published and or promote my book?
CSGE: Make sure you set up a facebook page for your book, a blog for your book, and a webpage for your book. You can publish the work yourself through amazon.com or a million other less known sites. (J.E. Barrett's Note: Do not tell Smashwords that they need to rethink their advertising strategy for their authors because you've sold 170% more of one work on amazon.com than you have for all your works combined on smashwords. They get mad and kick you off the site.) You'll never get a publishing house to look at your work unless you get a literary agent. If you want to publish the books yourself without any support at all then you can use lulu or ,again, a million other sites.
CSG: Thanks again CSGE. Who should I get to make my website? How do I get word out about my facebook page, etc?
CSGE: I used brand name X webhosting for my site. A good way to get word out about your facebook page is to recruit your family and friends to spread the word. Another thing you can do is join website blah blah blah and put the word out there. (J.E. Barrett's Note: website blah blah blah is a website full of just slightly more aspiring authors than there are $1.00 bills in the current U.S. Deficit. All of them are trying to advertise their stuff, wait for it.....to each other.)
And that's pretty much how it goes. Instead of the blind leading the blind is more a case of the barely literate leading the barely literate. I am not suggesting that I am even in the same metaphorical state as the great authors, but some of these people are awful. I have had people ask me to read something and after the first page I had to email them and tell them it was too much work for me to try to decipher whatever pigeon english they were using.
Still, I find the entire subculture slightly disheartening and very ironic. They seem like nice enough people, but it's as if all the eskimos in the world are trying to sell snow to each other. None of them need the snow the other Eskimos are selling because the snow they have to sell is way better than everybody else's. For a nominal fee though, they'll tell you everything you need to know about how to make the best snow ever and become a millionaire.
Now, that being said, I am going to offer all the extensive knowledge I've learned over the last two months with you for free.
Step 1: Work you ass off writing the best book you can. Just start writing the thing. Don't edit it as you go unless you need to make changes to fit the plot. Then, have people you trust to be honest with you, read it and tell you what they think. If ten people say it sucks or something needs changed then you might want to listen to them. Get the work as polished as you can, but at some point you have to let go. No matter what, you will never think it is good enough and there will always be things you want to change.
Step 2: Find a site like amazon or another that you can live with to publish your work. None of them are perfect. You have to give something to get something. In Amazon's case, that means that they are going to take their chunk off the top, and it's a bigger chunk than I get believe me. However, I knew the deal going in and I can pull my stuff at anytime.
Step 3: Advertise your butt off. You thought writing the book was work, hah. That was the easy part. Some people say to have a whole marketing plan and get the word out before your book is published, but that's not how I did it, so it falls as step number 3 for me. Get the word out any way you can. I would like to thank my family and every friend I have for supporting me in this endeavor. It means a lot. A little tip here though; if you go to a whole lot of pages on facebook, no matter how horribly commercial those pages are, and post the link to your book, then you will get labeled a spammer on facebook and not be allowed to post on there. I have sent press releases to every newspaper I could think of that might run it. For the papers in Ohio they mentioned I went to school there. For those in Maine they stressed that I'm from there. I left one of my paperbacks, complete with all my facebook, amazon, and website info inside the front cover, in a local Barnes & Noble store. Right now I'm thinking about getting some cheap business cards printed up and leaving them in books similar to mine at Barnes & Noble, libraries, you name it. I have become a promotion machine and I've decided that if I ever make any real money at this the first person I'm going to hire is someone to take care of all of it.
Step 4: Try to find time to write some other stuff. I haven't run out of ideas yet, but we all know time is a precious commodity. (Yes, I know I spent a lot of time typing this blog that I could have spent writing other stuff.) So, write when you can.
Now, add up all the hours you have spent writing, advertising, blogging, facebooking, editing, formatting. Then, take the amount of money you have made and divide it by the number of hours. You will see that you have been paying yourself a massive salary of around $0.19/hour. That's with a conservative estimate on the number of hours, but you get the idea. Now, am I complaining? Not at all. I have discovered a love of writing again. I enjoy doing it. I get an idea in my head and I do the best I can to get it down on paper and do it a little better each time. Am I going to get rich doing it? Probably not, with so many people competing for the same readers and money. Does that mean I am going to stop? Hell no. I'm going to keep doing this as long as I can whether anybody buys my books or not. I'll set a record as the author with the most books on amazon that nobody has bought a copy of. Doesn't matter. I didn't do this to get rich. I wouldn't turn it down, but money is not why I did it. I did it for all the intangibles it gives me. If you are reading this, I hope that you find something that gives you as much satisfaction as this has brought me.
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