{"id":103,"date":"2011-01-19T13:25:46","date_gmt":"2011-01-19T13:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geraldhornsby.wordpress.com\/?p=103"},"modified":"2011-01-19T13:25:46","modified_gmt":"2011-01-19T13:25:46","slug":"why-self-publish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/19\/why-self-publish\/","title":{"rendered":"Why self-publish?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nOkay, as indie or self-published writers, we’re all over the positive news stories. “Konrath makes $22,000 in a month”; “Hocking sells over 100,000 books in a month”; “Michael J. Sullivan makes $34,820 in a month”, and they give us inspiration. Few of us will match these astounding figures, but there’s no harm in trying, and even a little fraction of that performance would please most of us.<\/p>\n

But what is it about writing that I like? Is it purely the ability to create a story that I find entertaining, and meeting the challenge of completing the work? Is it the hope that I can have many thousands of dollars entering my bank account?<\/p>\n

Well, yes and no to both. The main reason I’m writing nowadays (rather than taking an easy retirement from a lifetime of hard, non-writing work) is because people like to read what I’ve written<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Yes, I’ve been an avid follower of Joe Konrath for some years, and when he started talking about how his experiments with self-publishing were going, I’m afraid I got excited. I had dollar signs in my eyes – and I can convert US dollars into my native UK pounds in a blink of one of those eyes. But since self-pubbing two collections of my short fiction, I’ve discovered something.<\/p>\n

I’ve discovered that warm, cosy, wonderful feeling you get when someone contacts you and says “hey, I downloaded your book. You know what? I loved it. Where can I read some more?” For me, that says it all. It’s not about the money, it’s not about the mental challenge – it’s about the entertainment, it’s about a person saying nice things about something you’ve spent many hours creating. I don’t think there’s any feeling like it.<\/p>\n

So this morning, I followed a link from a friend on Facebook to a good news story. A debut novel has been picked up by Bloomsbury, and the author signed up. She’s over the moon. And quite rightly. Read about it .: here :.<\/a> But, reading the story, something shocked me.<\/p>\n

Bloomsbury will publish her debut novel ‘The Night Rainbow’ in the spring of 2013<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Come again? Bloomsbury will launch her book in over 2 years’ time<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Now, I’m of an age where I don’t know if I’m going to be alive in 2 years’ time. Statistically, I should be. But who knows what the publishing world is going to look like in 2 years? Ebook sales are rising dramatically, although still less than 10% – 15% of total book sales. But with Amazon being predicted as possibly selling 12 millions Kindles in 2011 alone .: story here :.<\/a> and Apple reportedly placing orders for 65 million iPad displays for 2011 .: story here :.<\/a> there is no doubt the traditional model of book publishing is being changed, rapidly.<\/p>\n

I wish Claire King all the best, and it’s no mean feat to break through in the way she did. Having read some of what she’s written, I would say it’s truly deserved. She’s a damned good writer.<\/p>\n

But I just wouldn’t want to wait more than two years before my readers could enjoy my work. And that<\/strong> is why I self-publish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, as indie or self-published writers, we’re all over the positive news stories. “Konrath makes $22,000 in a month”; “Hocking sells over 100,000 books in a month”; “Michael J. Sullivan makes $34,820 in a month”, and they give us inspiration. Few of us will match these astounding figures, but there’s no harm in trying, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thinking"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5y3CH-1F","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}