The self publishing dialog (continued)

Yesterday I talked about my sales figures. Today I’m going to talk about what other people are talking about…er, some more.

First: Kobo announced it’s new self publishing program a BEA this week. YAY! Formerly you had to go through Smashwords to get into Kobo which totally sucks (you know, in my opinion.) Plus you had to jump through hoops and manage to get your formatting to survive Smashword’s “meatgrinder” (mine never did) in order to even be considered for the Apple/Sony/Kobo elite.

Second: Neil Davies explains why he self published here. My own reasons come down to I wrote the projects for fun, tried to market them and got very discouraged with the publishing process (with good reason.)

Third is this article on Six Tough Truths on Self-Publishing. Yeah, some of us ARE talking about it. I released my sales info yesterday, so you can see I’m not living the self publishing dream some people would have you believe is standard. I’ve tried guest blogs and getting reviews and in the end even the Dear DC post did nothing for my sales. My post yesterday pointed out that the book with the positive reviews sells a lot less than the book with no reviews. And very, very few review sites I sent the book to even bothered to respond. Not even the ones that accept self published books.

I agree the most with #6 in the article: The advocates aren’t selling self publishing they’re selling themselves. They stop being characterized as their books and become icons that people want to support because they agree with. Is there harm in this? Meh, I don’t know. I buy books because I like the author’s blog or had fun with them at a con. It’s no different. But the bigger mouth piece you are, the more well known you are, the more sales you get. Period.

I guarantee my book was better than Snookie’s, but courtesy of the whole TV star thing she’s out sold me. Nature of the beast. This should absolutely be taken into consideration before you self publish!

Also, when anyone, ANYONE immediately dismisses either traditional publishing (The old gatekeepers are going down!) or self publishing (It’s all a load of unedited crap that couldn’t get published “for real”!) I tend to dismiss them. This isn’t an either/or. It’s a decision to be made for each project based on what suits your goals best. Period.

Long live GOOD BOOKS!