I made a big decision last week. I’m going to self-publish a collection of my short stories.
I know that many people have been taking this path more recently and I’ve been reading a lot over the last year about others experiences and will be using that shared knowledge to guide me through the process. That said, there are still a lot of unknowns.
It’s a very exciting prospect and I’m looking forward to it a great deal, but it’s also very daunting and in some ways positively scary!
Like many other writers, I’m not the best at “selling myself”. When I was growing up this was called “blowing your own trumpet” and not seen as a positive trait. By nature I tend to be a little stand-offish when it comes to friendships and relationships in general, possibly as a legacy of childhood bullying. I’m also “blessed” by a quick tongue and often biting sense of humor that doesn’t endear me to others, as people often don’t understand that most of what I say is a joke.
So I’m a little reclusive and the phrase”doesn’t play well with others” probably fits quite well. Now I’m contemplating things like interviews, possible signings, press releases and other similar situations that I would usually try to avoid like the plague.
I think this is why so many people continue to pursue the traditional route to publication – they think that landing a deal with a publisher means that they won’t be burdened by all of the ancillary promotional activities. From what I’ve seen that doesn’t seem to be the case and the publisher is likely to very little in this area, which greatly strengthens the case for self-publishing.
The game is afoot!
