Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (6 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

6.

Edan: “The E-Reading Conundrum; or, I don’t want to be Amazon’s Bitch”

Elly: “Smashwords.”

It’s almost so easy to refute this argument that it’s difficult. In this section, Edan talks about how independently published e-books are only available through Amazon. This is wrong. I sell my e-book through three venues—including Amazon, BN.com, and my own website, through which I have sold copies and have reaped 100% royalties—and a distributor (Smashwords), which, at no cost and actually a very high value for all the advice freely offered, converted my e-book to half a dozen different e-book formats at literally the push of a button. Smashwords pushes to Barnes & Noble, the Sony e-reader, the iPad, and more. And they take less of a bite than Amazon. They’re pretty much awesome, and if you don’t know about them, 1) you haven’t done your research, and 2) you’re really, really missing out.

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (5 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

5.

Edan: “I Value the Publishing Community”
Elly: “I Am an Artist, Not a Jobs Plan”

Here, Lepucki discusses all the value that the “publishing community” (agents, editors, publicists, proofreaders, etc.) bring to a book. She presents an interesting POV from author Peter Straub, who says in part that “[if the author doesn’t have his work edited] what is being said about the status or role of selflessness before the final form of the fiction as accepted by the audience, I mean the willingness of the author to submerge his ego to produce the novel that is truest to itself?”

I admit don’t have a really strong, acerbic argument against this. I don’t think Lepucki is wrong, nor Straub. It’s just not how I feel about it. I love to write, but I also love to edit, and to do layouts. I have writerly friends, whose opinions I trust with my whole heart and mind, who help me bring my writing up to the next level. I don’t pay them. They’re in it for the love of reading and writing. I use the tools I have at my disposal to have the ultimate say in how my book reads, looks, and feels. I don’t want to let go of it, pass it off at any point where I will lose control over the final product to someone who does not in fact have in mind the “true self of the novel” (whatever that means), but rather has in mind what will sell the most copies to the most people.

To me, writing is, at its essence, a solitary activity. It demands a disciplined, independent spirit. Painters don’t have “editors” or “proofreaders” who come in at the last minute and fix all the little “mistakes.” It’s a control thing; it’s an integrity thing. Perhaps, yes, it’s an ego thing. But I wrote the book. It didn’t write itself. Talk like that is a little foo-foo for me. And really, is manufacturing perfection by putting something through a series of hands really staying “true” to the novel?

Some writers do not have publishing skills beyond being an awesome writer. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I do have other skills, and I also like to have control over my work. I choose to be independent of the “community” because I can be. I’m not in this to have a little skimmed off the top for the agent, then for the editor, and for a proofreader, a graphic designer, a publicist, etc. etc. I did the work. I want to be in control and I want to reap the rewards of—and take the knocks for—owing everything to myself.

Why I’m Not Giving You a Copy of My Book For Christmas

Selling is hard. It takes a very special breed of person to sell things for a living, and I am not that breed. I suppose there is a bit in my mutt blood somewhere—I work in Business Development, which is a fancy way of saying I sell my company’s services on behalf of the company. But when selling my own wares, I find the whole enterprise kind of skeevy.

When I sell for my company, 1. I sell in writing, and 2. I sell them, the company. For me, it’s much easier to sell something or someone else. I can brag about them on their behalf—and believe it, too. I can do this, and I’m good at it, because it doesn’t make me feel: (check one or more below)

• Egotistical
• Self-serving
• Self-involved
• Boorish
• Tasteless
• Clueless
• Impolite
• Embarrassed/shy

Those are things I feel when I try to tell someone about my book face-to-face. Those are things I feel when someone hands me $15 cold hard cash for a copy of my book. It’s an overwhelming sense of “Oh God I hope they are buying this because they want to read it and not just to make me feel good.” I don’t want people to give me money to make me feel good. I want them to exchange money for the joy of reading—it’s a transaction, not a favor. I want to know that they at least anticipate the joy of that reading (even if it is a glimmer of voyeurism at reading the inner thoughts of someone they know personally or professionally).

And so, the inverse of this is true. Just as I don’t want people to force the book on themselves because of a feeling of compulsory politeness, I neither want to do the forcing. As I’ve stated before on this blog, I am very aware of the reality that not everyone likes to read, not everyone who likes to read likes novels, and not everyone who likes novels will like THIS novel. Just because you like me doesn’t mean you will like my writing, and THAT’S OKAY. I am not so egotistical or desperate that I think every single person in the world needs to read my book. That would be silly. I don’t call myself a “soon to be best-selling author” as some in my circles do.

I want to find my audience and I want them to find me. I want this process to be organic. I want people to hear about the book, read the free samples, and get so sucked in that they can’t not buy the rest of the book. I want to build trust in my audience that I’ll deliver on the promise made in the premise I am not selling anything other than a great story and all that comes with that. . I want people to review the book and not my sparkling personality.

Sure, there’s a part of me in the book. Maybe all of me. But whether someone buys the book, owns the book, reads the book, or not—that is not a reflection on me as a person. It is a reflection that they are not my audience, and that is okay.

So if you want my book, you have to buy it or borrow it or ask for it for your birthday. If you want it, you and I will find a way to make that happen. But it won’t be in any Christmas packages from me this holiday season. Not only is it probably the most self-serving and impersonal gift I could imagine (“you’ll like it because I wrote it!”), I want my readers to want to read the book more than I want them to own it.

“Thus ends the ringing endorsement of my own modesty,” she said humbly. 

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (4 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

4.

Edan: "Self-Publishing is Better for the Already-Published"
Elly: "Publishing is Better for the Already-Published"

In this point, Lepucki makes an argument converse to many I’ve seen — the argument being that a successful indie pubbed book can attract agents and trad pubbers. Lepucki says the opposite: self-pubbing is better for those already published traditionally. I really think the short of it is that sophomores are more successful than freshmen, period. Lepucki says “It’s much harder to create a readership out of nothing.” Yes, it is. But I reiterate my earlier points that whether you go trad or indie, much of the onus of marketing goes to the author. The sweat of the author—in making the book great, then selling the book greatly—is what determines success. The second book will ALWAYS be a tiny bit easier.

What bugs me most about this section, however, is Lepucki’s comment, “I don’t need an intermediary to tell me about these writers because their previously published books speak for them.” She is going back to the argument that she trusts publishers to tell her what’s good. That is trust I just can’t get behind. Besides, I think if you’re a writer worth your salt—or, for that matter, a reader worth your salt—you should be able to sniff out a good book just by reading the first paragraph. With so many traditional AND independent publishers putting out free samples of their work (such as “Look Inside the Book” on Amazon, or a free 15% on Smashwords), you should be independent enough to make your own judgments. Or at the very least, ask a trusted friend what to read next. Please just stop feeding the machine.

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (3 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

3.

Edan: "I’d Prefer a Small Press to a Vanity Press"
Elly: "People still say 'Vanity Press'?"

I think the author’s point in this section is that “small presses are great.” I’m not sure what that has to do with a not self-publishing. I agree: small presses ARE great. But they have their own struggles, especially with lack of resources and a mismatch between income and output. I used to work for a small press, and it’s been hanging by a thread for as long as I can remember. Even in Lepucki’s own example, her beloved small press had to shut its doors.

Like internet start-ups, most small presses do not succeed. That’s the dirty little secret. Traditional publishing is expensive and it’s an insider’s game. When handled by a small press, books have about the same chance of success as with strong, informed independent publishing. A small press might be run by one or two people handling a dozen or so new books, and a back catalog of a couple dozen more. These are strapped, frazzled people. Well-intentioned, but overworked. Often, the onus is on the author to drive marketing and publicity on her own. The small press does what it can: secures some reviews in the trades, puts some branding on materials, networks, leverages the back catalog. But the difference between a small press experience and a good independent publishing experience is surprisingly negligible. The major difference, of course, is the bite of profits the author loses to the publisher.

Getting a book into print is only the first step. Lepucki recounts a great stroke of luck with her novella, but I hope she isn’t naïve enough to believe that will happen every time. I hope she also realizes that is the kind of traction you can create for yourself if your product is excellent.

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (2 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

2.

Edan: "I Write Literary Fiction"
Elly: "The Segregation of Literary Fiction is False Logic"

In this point, the author laments that only genre fiction can find success in self-publishing and that “literary fiction” has no home there. She says the landscape for literary fiction in indie publishing won’t change until Jeffrey Eugenides and Alice Munro use CreateSpace.

Yeah, if your bar is Eugenides-like success, you’re probably going to fall short, no matter what sort of publishing path you choose. Firstly, literary fiction is a hard sell no matter what. Most agents and most trad pubbers are looking for genre fiction. In large part, only very small, very boutique houses or university presses are going to publish debut literary fiction. At the bigger houses who delve into lit fic, they either want the big name with street cred, or the ready-made movie book (or both). Literary fiction writers have the deck stacked against them no matter what, because that’s not what the general reading public buys.

Secondly, as even the author herself points out, literary fiction is as much a niche or a “genre” as, say, hard science fiction. Each has their own specific audience, with limited opportunity for cross-over and cross-selling unless the book meets certain mainstream expectations regarding plot, character, tone, etc. Separating literary fiction out is not only snobbish, it’s false logic. Both self-published and trad-published author will fail if they do not identify their audience and market to it accordingly.

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (1 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

1.

Edan: "I Guess I’m Not a Hater"
Elly: "I Guess I am?"

In this point, the author states that the argument that traditional publishing is dying is moot because trad pubbers are making more money than ever. She says they consistently put out great books and she wants that stamp of approval on her own book. “I trust publishers,” she says.

Saying you trust publishers to tell you what’s good for you in literature is like trusting a doctor to give you a prescription for a pill that has him rolling in kick-backs. They don’t have your best interest in mind; they have theirs in mind. They are a business. They do not put out the best books; they put out the books that sell the most. Most of the time, these do not overlap.

Nobody’s saying that traditional publishers don’t know what they’re doing. But the model is set up to favor incumbents. Large advances—or any advances at all, really—are a gamble unless spent on a known commodity. Times are tenuous for the big guys, so they’re going to continue to put out what they are fairly sure will make money. They also have the power behind them to be tastemakers. Books that become inexplicably wildly popular (read: Twilight) do not do so solely on their inherent merits. They are calculated business ventures. See, “Recursive Self-Homogenization.”

Trad pubbing doesn’t favor the fresh or the rebellious. The whopping, weird 1Q84 would never have come out in the U.S. if Haruki Murakami wasn’t already a known commodity. Guess what: I’m not, and likely you aren’t. Trad pubbing is for folks who can have their name bigger than the title on the cover, and the occasional one-off they can squeeze in using profits from the former.

A New Look and a New Outlook

It's been a truly crazy couple of weeks. I know my friends and family miss me. I know I need to wash the kitchen floor and repaint my toenails. I could stand to go back to the gym, oh, every day for three hours for the next month. Unfortunately, the phrase "worked my ass off" has only been a metaphor.

My nose may be a bit scraped up from the grindstone, but I was able to get The War Master's Daughter out almost on schedule. The site has been redesigned with a new look, and I think it's rather pretty and inviting (despite the gothicky pull quotes). Check it out, if you have the chance.

You'll also notice that the book itself is now available for pre-order. I did not anticipate that things on Amazon's end would take as much time as they are taking, so the paperback won't be available till closer to Christmas. But the eBook will be out on December 13, and anyone who pre-orders the paperback will get a free eBook so you can get a head start on reading.

So the site's new, and I'm feeling somehow new too. I've received five pre-orders already, so it really feels like I'm running a business. Of course it's a terrible business in which I'm knee-deep in red, but I don't care about that. I'm not in this to make money. I never was.

I'm also feeling an enormous sense of ... oh, I'm not sure how to put it. I guess I feel indebted, to my readers. I owe you for your support, and I only hope I can deliver the experience you are seeking for your $14.95 + $1 handling fee. I feel absolutely humbled. I blushed when I saw my first order come in. It was a scary, wonderful thing. I can hardly wait to see what the future holds.

I turn 30 on Sunday. I feel like this is right where I should be.

Read an Excerpt from TWMD

A new excerpt from my novel, The War Master's Daughter, is available on Scribd. It's taken directly from the proof for the final novel. So here are your action items:

1) Read the excerpt - the prologue and first chapter are available: http://www.scribd.com/doc/71588968/The-War-Master-s-Daughter-promotional-excerpt

2) If you like the excerpt, share the link with your network on Twitter, Facebook, or your blog. Then become a fan on Facebook so you can hear right away when the book is available (Dec 11 is the target release date). http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-War-Masters-Daughter/222034247862708

3) When the book is released, get yourself a copy - paperbacks and eBooks for various devices will be available. Those ordering the paperback directly from me will get a signed copy and some extra goodies.

4) Pour yourself a hot cocoa and cozy up with the book. Trust me, it's perfect wintertime reading, by the fireplace, with the furry animal of your choice (cat, dog, husband...) curled up at your side.

5) If you like it, please tell 3 friends about it. I don't necessarily mean post about it on the internet (you can do that too); but really tell some people. People have so much content coming at them all the time, it's the eye-to-eye recommendation over a cuppa that really motivates people to action.

As an independent publisher, I'm on my own in a cold, dark landscape. I want you to buy my book, but I don't expect you to if it's not your thing. I understand that. There is too much to read. Over 300,000 new books were published LAST YEAR. And I'm sure you still want to go back and re-read Catcher in the Rye. Again.

But try the excerpt. You might like it. You could hate it. It could also open up a new world to you that you never considered. But at least you'll know. Then your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to help others find out if they like it.

Psst...

Q&A

Happy NaNoWriMo, everyone! To celebrate the beginning of this glorious month and to circumvent the standard "I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long" blog-apology, a Q&A:

Q: Elly, why no updates in so long??

A: The autumn is quite a very busy time at my day job, which happens to be a mentally taxing one, full of much reading, writing, and editing. It's a tough thing to read, write, and edit all day, then come home and do same but in an entirely different mode. I've been zapped, and progress on the book stalled.

Q: Oh no!

A: I know, right?

But that's not all. I came to the realization that I had really deluded myself that time spent marketing--including blogging, tweeting, networking, reading about marketing . . . --was time well spent. It wasn't. It was merely a new mode of procrastination that allowed me to feel productive, but was actually keeping me from finishing the book. You can't market something that doesn't exist. When I did have time and energy to work on the book, I was self-stalling by doing things decidedly not work on the book.

Writing about writing is now low priority; writing is the priority.

Q: Totally understand that, though I do miss your wisdom and guidance. What's the status of the book now?

A: End of October, I completed a very large project at work and got a much needed vacation, which has been fully dedicated to finishing my substantive edits.

Q: So are you still on schedule?

A: My original schedule was to release the book in December, to coincide with my 30th birthday. The major delays originally threw that schedule out the window. However, I've realized that if I skip unnecessary steps like the Kickstarter campaign, trying to get advance reviews/blurbs, and picking a place to have a book release party, I can still get the book out in December.

I decided that Kickstarter may, at this point, be too crowded to be successful for me. I've chosen to bite the bullet and self-fund the publishing, while cutting upfront costs as much as possible. I've also decided that advance reviews and blurbs are an unnecessary step that would very probably put me back in the same self-doubting mental space as searching for an agent did. Regarding the party, yeah, that'd be awesome. But it can wait.

I need no more self-defeating, time-eating endeavors. Getting the book out is most important, even if it is a "soft" release.

Q: So, December?? Really?

A: Yup. It's on, baby.

And guess what else: the cover, title, and an excerpt will be released today.

The Pumple Cake Experiment

My friends had a party this weekend. Not just any party, but a grand bacchanalia of food. It was the annual "This is Why You're Fat" party, a celebration of all things, buttered, battered, deep-fried, married with bacon.

This was my first year attending, and being the competitive person I am, I wanted to make a play for one of the prizes: "Best Meat Treat" or "Best Sweet Treat." This led me to the Pumple Cake (or "pake"). I can't take credit for inventing it, but I will take credit for my own unique spin on the recipe and the hours of difficult, risky work that went into baking it. My Pumple Cake was:

An apple pie inside a spice cake

A pumpkin pie inside an apple caramel cake

A middle layer of coconut-pecan frosting with candied bacon

All covered in cream cheese frosting

Every step of the way was a chance for disaster. Thankfully everything came together (albeit a little lopsided), and the results were decadent and delicious. I took home second place "Sweet Treat." The prize was a gallon of Mrs. Butterworth.

With its wonderful combination of spicy autumn flavors, and its consummate over-the-topness, this dish would be perfect for Thanksgiving--if you can find the 5.5 hours of oven time it takes.

Here's the process:

Since the Pumple is labor intensive by itself--as well as a huge gamble--I went for pre-made ingredients. The pies were Marie Calendar frozen pies. The cakes were Duncan Hines Spice Cake and Apple Caramel Cake. I doctored the cake mixes by adding half a box of instant butterscotch pudding mix to each, and subbing in buttermilk for the water.

I used Betty Crocker coconut-pecan frosting and Pillsbury cream cheese frosting. Neither of these was very good. They had that chemical-y, preservative-y, crappy bake sale taste. I think the single thing I could have done to make the Pumple even better would have been to make the cream cheese icing from scratch. Next time...

Rounding out the ingredient list were the maple bacon, brown sugar, and bourbon for the candied bacon middle layer. Sure, this was indulgent and unnecessary, incongruous even, but for "TIWYF," bacon is almost a prerequisite.

I baked the pies the night before, so that they would have a chance to cool completely overnight for easier de-tinning. The pies each took about an hour and the aroma in our apartment just about made me insane.

The next morning, I jumped in with making the cakes. Mixing the first cake batter proved to be the easiest part of a long, hard road.

I'm not much of a baker, so I had to buy a new cake pan just for this project. My friend recommended Calaphon, and I sprung for the springform. I figured, the less I had to handle the cakes, the better. I think the pan made the process a lot less complicated than it could have been.

After buttering and flouring the cake pan, the next step is to put a layer of batter on the bottom of the pan. With the addition of the pudding mix, the spice cake batter was really thick, so it more like putty than batter. It was a good foundation for the very heavy apple pie.

The Marie Callender apple pie was almost too big to fit in the cake pan. Getting it into the pan was really tricky and seriously got my adrenaline pumping. But with a quick, brave flip, it splatted into the pan and fit with a sliver to spare. The other half of the batter gets spread over the top and sides of the pie.

Baking the "pake" was another big challenge. The box cake mix said it would take about 35 minutes. But 35 minutes in, it was clear this cake was not going to be done anytime soon. An hour in, the edges were getting awfully dark and I was afraid they would burn, but the middle was still gooey. I know others have ruined their pakes with overbaking. But I did some quick research and discovered the trick: I covered the top of the cake with foil, lowered the temp to 300, then let it bake away until it was done. It took almost 2 hours, but it didn't burn.

The springform pan allowed for easy removal. I don't think I could have gotten the cake out any other way. It weighed about 5 pounds, and I was worried the weight of the pie would make it fall through the bottom. But thankfully I could remove the outer ring and slide it onto the cooling rack. In the picture below, you can see the pie crust peeking out through the side of the cake.

While the apple pake was cooling in the fridge, I moved onto the pumpkin. The pie was smaller, lighter, and more structurally sound, so it was far easier over all.

After the pumpkin pake was done and cooling, I moved onto candying the bacon for the middle. I par-fried the bacon, then put it on a parchment-covered baking pan. I mixed a teaspoon of maple flavoring with a couple tablespoons of bourbon, and sprinkled it on each piece. Then I covered each piece with brown sugar. I baked then in a 400-degree oven for 10 minutes a side. they got a little dark, so I'd probably bring it down to 8 minutes a side next time.

This stuff was GOOD. I highly recommend it, pumple or not.

Between the layers, we spread the coconut-pecan frosting and added the bacon bits. I had been leery of the bacon and went back and forth and adding it. But in the end, I'm glad I did. The smokey sweet flavor was a perfect counter-note to the sweetness, spice, and caramel in the rest of the dessert.

Getting the pumpkin layer onto the apple layer was another anxiety-inducing moment.

We frosted the outside of the cake with cream cheese frosting, then decorated the top with a dollop of coconut-pecan frosting, candy pumpkins, a sliced gala apple, and a square of candied bacon.

I added it up: The final Pumple Cake has over 13,000 calories. And every bite was worth it.

Recursive Self-Homogenization

I frankly don’t know who Shawn Coyne is, other than he’s pissed me off. I hope he isn’t terribly powerful with connections that could forever keep me unsuccessful. (I have a feeling I can take care of that myself, thankyouverymuch.) But I think he’s doing a disservice to literature and I need to say something about it.

I came across an old interview with him where he was talking with Amy Brozio-Andrews of AbsoluteWrite about his publishing company, Rugged Land. He explains this so-called dirty little secret of the publishing world:

“3 out of 5 books published by the big companies lose money. So you have 40% of the list paying off the debt of the other 60% and, on top of that, holding up the companies overall profitability. Not exactly a great business enterprise to jump on.”

Coyne’s solution to this is that his house puts out only 6 paperback and 6 hardback books per year, and aims to have nearly 100% of his books be profitable. He thinks that’s a better model.

Well, perhaps it’s a better model for business, if making money is the single biggest thing you care about. But if you have an interest in supporting literature as art, expanding people’s minds, leading the edge of creativity, or being a tastemaker, perhaps the 40/60 model of the big guys is a worthwhile endeavor.

What really got my blood boiling was this piece of “advice” Coyne tossed to all the AbsoluteWrite readers: “Figure out who will buy the book. If you can’t figure out who will, then stop writing.”

Stop writing. Amazing, sir. The model you promote is to identify pre-existing audiences and then write for them. Identify a large group of people who already like something and all like the same thing, and then write something like they like so they’ll like it.

I call this the “recursive self-homogenization” of literature. Instead of writing the great new breakout novel, you’re only supposed to write something just like previous breakouts. Let someone else create the audience, and you just piggyback on top of that. If you’re successful too, then someone else will figure out what your book had in common with the breakout, and repeat it. Then someone else will repeat it again. The same audiences keep reading the same books, so the same books keep getting published. The stories become copies of copies of copies, each less vibrant than the previous until you they’re barely anything at all. All the YA fantasy that followed Harry Potter. All the paranormal romance that followed Twilight. All the dystopian fiction that will follow the Hunger Games. But at some point, the quality gets so low, audiences are forced to turn to something new.

Coyne says don’t write it if you can’t sell it. The converse is, if you can sell it, write it.

I say, write what moves your soul and worry about the markets later. Don’t be a copy of a copy of a copy. Don’t perpetuate the homogenization. Your audience is out there. It’s just that they’re not all hanging out together. They’re waiting to be found—by you.

What do you think? Do you write to be successful in the markets? Or is your measure of success something different?

Titular Angst

I finally had a cover layout that I loved. I even showed a few people. I was totally ready to post it on my website, get postcards printed, and start the full court marketing press.

And then I changed it.

The reason? I changed my title. I am more than a bit torn up about it. This is the biggest "darling" I've murdered, after years of attachment. I love the word “Secernere”--the way it sounds like a secret. What it means and the mystery it reflects. I think it’s a great title in the tradition of gothic romances, like Glenarvon, Vastarien, or Malpertuis. It also looks just gorgeous on the cover in all lower-case—all the round letters, the repeating e’s. It’s a very symmetrical, attractive word.

secernere

But I’ve come to realize that I would be making a bad choice to continue to use Secernere as the book title. The number one reason is that no one can pronounce it. Everyone seems to have a slightly different take on it. If you can’t pronounce—hell, if you can’t spell it if you hear it pronounced—how are you going to ask for it in a book store? How are you going to look it up on Amazon? It’s not memorable, because there’s a high probability people will remember it wrong.

I just imagine the conversations:

“Tell me about your book!”

“Oh thanks for asking! It’s historical fantasy with a nod to the old gothic romances. It’s called Secernere.”

“Come again?”

“Secernere.”

“Sesser huh? Can you write that down for me? I’ll never be able to remember that.”

Later, while searching on Google… “I think she said it was something that started with an S? Oh well. Maybe I’ll buy the next Steig Larson.”

I need a title that is easy to pronounce, easy to remember, unmistakable, and—above all—isn’t taken by someone else! (All I need is for someone to end up buying the wrong Surfacing. Thanks, Margaret Atwood! Just kidding.)

So, the book has been retitled. Tentatively. Tentatively retitled. But herein lies the problem: This new, longer, four-word title, which includes such ugliness as an apostrophe and a small article, does not look nice in place of Secernere in the cover I so painstakingly designed. It's not as simple as a find+replace. So it’s back to the drawing board (back to the InDesign screen…).

I hope I arrive at a cover I love as much, and I hope I grow to love the new title. It's a good title. It's sturdy like a milkmaid. It is a textbook title (if your textbook is Save the Cat, like mine has been recently). It has double meanings and is thematically relevant. It describes the hero and has a twist of irony. But it's still not Secernere, something I hope I will get over with time. This has by far been the most frustrating task of the publishing experience so far. I understand now why people outsource the cover. Then again, I would have been in the same boat as I am now: great cover, wrong title.

Stay tuned for the big reveal. As soon as I stop having nightmares about bad titles and awful graphic design, I might be ready to release the cover to the public. Maybe. Perhaps I should have just gone with the Gothic Title Generator.

The Revisions Matrix: My Approach to One-Pass Novel Revising

I wrote earlier about how my excellent beta gave me terrific groundwork for a plan to revise my novel. I have a good framework there. I have all the characters there, and the plot works, without—as I’d feared—any gaping holes. What I’m doing now is, as the late great Blake Snyder puts it, “pulling the arrow back.”

(Side note: I’ve been reading Save the Cat! and finding a lot of it very applicable to novel writing. I highly encourage writers to check out Black Snyder's website. There’s also a great interview with him over at Writer Unboxed.)

Pulling the arrow back means setting up your protagonist at the beginning of the book so that she is in a position to make the longest trajectory to her "new" self at the end of the book. Think about an arrow you don't pull back in the bow very far. It goes only a little wobbly ways before it falls flat to the ground. Now think about the arrow pulled back so far and so hard that it strains your every muscle. That’s the arrow that’s going to make the best flight.

My plan for revision is to pull back the arrow of Lady Aurora of Cavalcata, my protagonist. I’m asking myself, why is this the greatest adventure of her life? I need to make it so the stakes can’t get any higher. I also need to make her choices stronger, so that she is more active in the change she undergoes in the course of the story. And then there are some housekeeping things to attend to: enhance the presence of the war in the story, refine the minor characters, balance the flashbacks between the first and second halves.

So here’s what I did: I figured out the top ten or so major things I need of which I need to be vigilantly aware during the revision process. These are questions I need to ask myself, thematic arcs, things I can enhance to make each scene and character work harder. Examples:

• How is the war present in this scene?
• Is this character acting true to type? Or purposely going against type?
• "My life has changed for having met another” (this is my thematic arc)

I took these things and wrote them in fat, green Sharpie marker on index cards, which I taped all over my desk. All I have to do is glance up and remember what I need to be paying attention to. This isn’t the time to be mulling over word choice or paragraph length. I need to be focused and targeted on the ways I am enhancing the book, and these index cards keep me on track.

The second thing I did was to create an enormous spreadsheet, my Revisions Matrix. Going down the left side, I have every single scene in my book. Across the top, I have the following:

• Chapter number – helps me see if I have tried to stuff too much or too little into a single chapter
• Scene number – for identification purposes
• Time – helps me ensure that the timeline matches up across the whole arc of the book, including flashbacks
• Plot – again, for identification purposes
• Character change – what is the arc of the character in this scene? These are opportunities to “pull the arrow back” in a small way.
• Opportunity (Character) – what opportunity do I have here to enhance the characters in this scene? Are they serving the themes? Are they being true to their essential selves? Are there parallels to late scenes that can be leveraged?
• Opportunity (Conflict) – what is the tension in this scene? Can it be enhanced? Am I making things too easy on my characters? Am I pulling the arrow back far enough as I aim at targets later in the book?
• Opportunity (War) – how is the war present in this scene? Did the characters seem to forget there is a war going on? How can I drop in bits of history and details that make it seem more like a character in itself?
• Theme Stated – In this final column, I take one sentence from the Chapter that sums up the theme for that chapter. This helps me focus the chapter and make sure everything is serving the mini thematic arc. If there is not a stated theme, I have a problem, and I need to address it. One of my favorites: “Sometimes locks are to keep things out.”

When this matrix is complete, it will be my scene-by-scene blueprint for revision. It makes life easier for me because I’ve gotten all the thinking out of the way first. When I get to each scene, I just have to write to my plan. And because I planned it all out ahead of time, I’ve mitigated the risk of introducing something new or making a change that will cascade to other parts of the book in a way I haven't planned for.

The plan now is to revise one chapter per night according to the matrix. Then I print out a hard copy and do my red-line edit. The theory is that, when I get to the end, all I’ll have to do is input the red-line changes and I’ll be done. Pretty sweet! Let’s just see if I can stick to that pace for all 39 chapters…

The Tocking Clock

I am sorely behind schedule.

I’m sore about it because I’m bumping up against these milestones I’ve set for myself in order to meet my goal of publication in December, and also because if I can’t find the time now to do the work, why do I think it’s going to get any better later?

I’m realizing that, once you remove the find an agent/find a publisher piece of the equation, an indie pubber’s timeline is not that different from a traditional publisher. There is a tremendous amount of work to do! And because so much of the work includes sequential tasks, and not parallel tasks, it really stretches that timeline out.

I set my release target as early December. That’s in part because I will turn 30 on December 11^th, and in part because I want to grab at least a piece of the holiday sales action. It’s also in part because that’s about the soonest I thought I could get to where I need to be. Backing out of the date, I need time to get the books printed and shipped. Before that I need to do a round of Advanced Readers Copies (ARCs) to send to reviewers and blurbers in an effort to secure some of those elusive back cover quotes. So before that, I need to have the exterior and the interior done, and at least once-overed by my proofreader. To get the interior done, I need the narrative LOCKED DOWN. I can’t be tinkering with it—at least not in any major way—once it’s layout time.

So where in my schedule do I have “narrative locked down”? Um, August.

Hello, August. I can see you because you are a mere two weeks away. Care to delay your visit for a few weeks while I nail these revisions?

I thought six months of lead time would be ample, generous, even under the constraints of doing all this myself. Add to the work of the actual book itself that I’m planning a Kickstarter campaign and a book trailer, and I need to do a pre-release marketing push: I’ve made myself into quite a busy lady.

Can I make the December deadline? Probably. But I’m not sure I can do it without sacrificing the butt-in-seat time I need to do the revision that will make Secernere shine. I mean, it’s fine now. But I want it to be awesome. My revision plan calls to revise, re-read, and red-line one chapter a night. That plan will take me deep into August, approaching September—and I’ve already missed four days in a row. I’m hoping I can use weekends, holidays, and a few days off to double-up and get back on track. But we’ll see.

There’s always January. Cold, bleak, January, when people just want to curl up beside the fire with a good book. …and spend the Amazon gift cards they got for Christmas.

Beta Testing: When's the Right Time to Bring in Outside Readers?

The most current draft of Secernere has been re-written three times, then line edited twice, and I’ve read the entire thing out loud to myself. But I know it’s not quite done yet. I can feel it. I also know I am too close to the manuscript at this point to see the flaws a fresh reader will catch immediately. That’s why I enlisted beta readers—and why you should too. But it’s essential to bring them in at the right point in the process.

My first betas were ill-chosen. Do not ask your nearest and dearest to read the novel you’ve been slaving over for years. Don’t give it to your mother or significant other. One of three things will happen: 1) They will fall in love with it—and you won’t get any helpful feedback as they gush about how great you are. 2) They will find problems with it, and you will try to take it as constructive criticism, but your feelings will secretly be hurt and you will resent them. 3) They will be too busy to read it but will accept anyway out of guilt, and it will make you both feel awkward and resentful.

An ideal beta reader is someone with whom you are acquainted—or even friends with—but who also has an expertise that will help you improve your writing. This could be someone from your creative writing group, a friend who happens to be a professional editor, or someone who reads extensively in your genre. After my ill-advised first beta round, I chose wisely for my second: three friends who are, respectively, a fellow writer, a professional editor, and a filmmaker.

A couple days ago I got the first comments back, these from my writer friend, Jes. Jes is much like me in that she is very well educated in creative writing technique and she is also a structuralist. She’s a recent convert of the Save the Cat! techniques and has been showing me the ropes. In her email, she let slip that she had taken 20 pages of notes as she’d read Secernere, but thankfully she distilled her final “book report” into just 8 pages. 8 pages still panicked me. But I printed the pages out, took them, home and carefully read every word.

Reading a detailed account of someone else’s reading of my work caused in me some of the strangest feelings I think I’ve ever had. Suddenly, the characters, the plot, the setting were no longer wholly mine. It was as if Pandora’s box opened and everything in my book is now free in the universe, existing alongside other fictional characters into whom life has been imbued by readers. It all feels so much more real.

Jes’ comments were absolutely stunning in how helpful they will be as I work through my revision. She didn’t point out (as I thought betas would) character names she didn’t like, or anachronistic foods, or other details that are rather inconsequential at this stage of revision. Instead, she identified my thematic arc and sub-themes, described the major characters’ traits, and discussed her impression of the time, setting, and backdrop of war. Then she indicated ways in which I could strengthen theme, character, plot, setting, by leveraging ideas already in the book. She didn’t point out weaknesses, but pointed out existing strengths that could be made more poignant with small changes.

I was ecstatic. I had imagined I would be greeted with comments of everything that was wrong, and I would be forced to make hard decisions that would adversely affect other passages, domino-like. I had imagined tearing it all apart, then having to scrap the whole thing because I couldn’t put it back together. Instead, my friend has created for me a plan of action that will turn a good book into a great book.

So my conclusion is to choose your betas wisely, and only bring them in after you have done your due diligence of rewriting and revising. It’s not fair to ask someone to read your first draft. Ask them to read when you’ve solved all the problems you can identify yourself, when you know something’s still lacking, but you need the help in figuring out what. Your betas are not there to help you make a rough draft into a decent draft. They should help you make a good book into a great book.

I’ll be writing more about my revision strategy soon. Hint: it involves index cards and an enormous spreadsheet…

Revisions Begin

Virtual Interview

Sarah Allen just posed a list of questions for writers on her blog, so I thought I’d turn them into a virtual interview. It’s practice for when people actually ask me for my opinion, haha.

There were two types of questions: some about writing and some about marketing/networking. I’ll tackle the writing questions in this post, and go back to the marketing ones later.

-Plotter or pantser? And how do you specifically go about doing your plotting/pantsing?

I would say I’m a bit of a hybrid, with a heavy lean toward plotter. I blame my day job. In proposal writing, it’s mandatory that you be in compliance with what’s called the Request for Proposals (RFP) document. The way you get in compliance is to create outlines and checklists and plan, plan, plan. Basically, you have to put all your information in little (figurative) boxes that are laid out for you ahead of time—but it still has to be compelling, unified writing in the end.

From this, I’ve learned the value of having boxes to fill. Pre-planning your writing makes the writing go easier, and you can jump from box to box if you get stuck with one. Planning helps eliminate writer’s block.

I say with great caution that planned structure is your friend, because I know so many writers who think that “formula” is the other F-word. But structure can be as simple as the three-act structure (i.e., beginning, middle, and end) to the more complicated 15-beat structure (Word doc) from Save the Cat!. Sometimes I like to self-impose complicated structures to my writing as an interesting experiment. I once wrote a short story in the form of a sonnet, where I replaced the end-of-line rhyme with different characters’ POVs. It failed, but it sure was fun!

But I do think it’s dangerous to try to plot out specifically what happens, and this is where the “pantsing” comes in. If your characters are strong, they will develop wills of their own, and they won’t necessarily end up in the situations you want them to. So when you plan, it’s much better to plan changes and circumstances.

For example, you might say in your outline/writing plan, “at this point, something will happen that changes Cassie’s opinion about Bob.” Your characters of Cassie and Bob will show you what that event will be when you get there; but in order to move your plot and character arcs forward, you have to know that the change is necessary and figure out when it’s necessary. As another example, you might say in your outline, “Cassie is trapped somewhere and has to do something against her nature to get free.” This situation could be a million different things, from a literal trap to an emotional one. But this moment will be an important development in your plot and character arc.

-What is your writing schedule like? Morning? Evening? 3:47-5:02 AM?

I have a day job that can be very mentally fatiguing, and I spend a large chunk of my day writing—technical, not fiction. Unfortunately, I don’t always have the energy to write fiction before or after work and for this reason, I don’t write regularly.

Rather, I tend to rely on very condensed, very intensive writing sessions, such as National Novel Writing Month, the 3-Day Novel Contest, and planned vacations that I devote to writing. I also plan writing sessions with friends, where we get together and write for a couple hours. These types of gimmicks serve to force me to be very productive and to write very fast, often resulting in decent first drafts that I can then edit at my leisure.

For me (and certainly not for everyone!) writing works best in long, intense, consecutive sessions—living, breathing, eating the work for that period of time. Editing works itself out in the short bursts I can afford during the rest of my life.

I do dream of someday having a regular writing schedule, but nothing else about my life is regular or scheduled, so a dream it remains.

-Do you listen to music when you write? If yes, what music?

I do like music, but it’s very important that the music not be distracting, so I tend to listen to the same music over and over again until it becomes basically white noise. My favorite go-to album is Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief, which I have listened to hundreds of times while writing.

Sometimes I use soundtracks from movies to write very intense scenes. The score from an action scene in a movie can really put you in the mindset to write a great action scene in your book!

-Do you have a daily/weekly word count goal, and what is it?

Because I write the way I do, goals fluctuate greatly. During NaNoWriMo, my goal is 1700–2000 words per day. During the 3-Day Novel Contest, I put out 7000–8000 words per day. When I write on my days off, I usually aim to get 1000 words down. I like round numbers.

-What character types are your favorite?

My favorite types of characters are the ones who I can’t wait to get to know. They’re the ones who never do what you want them to when you’re writing because they have minds and personalities of their own.

My favorite character recently has been the male lead from Secernere, Storey. Storey is probably one of the most complicated and compelling characters I’ve ever written. He’s a pacifist who is forced to facilitate violence in order that he can achieve peace for his country—and for his soul—in the longer term. Storey has become someone who I sometimes forget doesn’t actually exist, which is kind of sad because I think he'd be pretty awesome to hang out with.

Under Cover

I just re-read my last post, and I feel that I must wrap up the loose end I left about how I would feel after signing the paperwork to license the cover photograph for Secernere. I signed the contract late last week, paid the fee, and downloaded the final high-resolution TIFF from the lovely and talented photographer (who I believe is also the model in the photograph).

I tell you I did not feel one single twinge of regret. Not one pang. The only thing I felt was a fluttering heart, much akin to the feeling when one receives a note from a new lover. Owning the rights to this perfect image has solidified Secernere in my mind as more than just words on a page, as more than a manuscript. The paperwork, the signature, the out-shelling of money, the filed-away invoice as a statement of business expense: this was my first real move down the independent publishing road.

Over the weekend, I finished the layout to my cover, including the spine and the back, on which I posted draft sales copy and an exorbitantly laudatory (fake) blurb. And I am so happy with it. It's this perfect little decoration that I will wrap around my interesting little story and turn it into this nebulous idea called a "book."

On the Awl yesterday, I read a quote from Mark Jude Poirier that summed it up so well: "The cover of your first book is like your wedding dress if you’re a woman: You want it to represent who you are, but you want it to make you look much better than you normally do."

Now I'm not all that into weddings, and I don't put much time into daydreaming about a wedding dress, but my first book cover is shaping up to be a pretty good goshdarn stand-in. Timeless, classic, simple, muted but memorable. (Too bad it probably won't make my mother quite as happy.)

But oh my gosh, I can't wait to share it! Stay tuned.

On Designing a Book Cover

I think a rite of passage in this self-publishing thing is to do your homework. This has been done before, and most certainly documented before in this, the Age of Documentation. So the new self-publisher’s first task is to educate herself using the lessons learned by those who blazed the trail. Among the advice that is most frequently and loudly repeated is this: Do not to try to design the cover yourself.

This is also the very first piece of advice I threw out the window.

It was a somewhat worrisome choice, I admit. There’s something about the covers of self-published books that scream “No Professionals Here!” What is it about self-published book covers that self-identify them as such? I have yet to put my finger on it. I think there are a few common missteps: designing in a non-design program, such as Word or PowerPoint; using common fonts like Times New Roman and not tweaking anything about them; using cheap, off-the-shelf stock photography or graphics. But those notwithstanding, professional designers do bring a certain je ne se quoi.

But only some of them.

I don’t want to skewer an entire industry, but let’s just say I’ve worked with enough graphic designers to know that they’re just like any other professional: some are really amazing, some are really terrible, and the bulk fall on the continuum in between.

I would be hard-pressed to call myself a professional graphic designer, but I do perform design on at least a weekly basis in the course of my occupation. I also minored in Fine Art at Goucher, and studied art for 17 consecutive years. I draw and paint at home. I have “an eye” as they say, so I don’t feel out of my element in putting together my own book cover. I’ve chosen to do this because I’ve committed to keeping the “self” in self-publisher. (I’ll tell you I considered for more than a long moment printing the books myself and hand-binding them, but that’s another story. I smartly moved on from that choice.) I consider myself an artist, and I feel I would be cheating some part of myself if I were to leave the cover art up to someone else.

But as I’m moving forward with a particular photograph from a particular photographer, I’m realizing the small piece of joy that I’m missing out on by doing it myself: the reveal. In the same way I will never be able to read Secernere for the first time like any other reader can, I will never be able to see my cover for the first time. It is evolving in draft after draft, tweak after tweak. I’m losing my objective eye for it because I’ve seen it through so many iterations. As explored in earlier posts, I have myriad reasons for knowing I’m ready to publish the book. I don’t have quite so much confidence in the cover design.

I’m a little disappointed that I won’t ever take in that gasp of breath and exclaim, “Oh my god! It’s perfect!” when I see the delivered cover from my hired gun. But neither will I ever have to be a PITA control freak client saying to the designer, “Can you try it once more with Garamond instead?”

It was difficult to settle on a photographer. It’s not the photographer; she’s amazing and her work looks like it was taken right out of my book. It’s more that it’s difficult to narrow my choices down. So it was even more difficult to settle on a handful of her photographs, from which I narrowed it down to one. Now that I’ve mentally locked myself into one, I’m beginning to feel a bit trapped, and I worry that feeling may get worse once I sign the paperwork. After that, the photograph has to become part of a design, and eventually I will be able to change nothing, not even the spread on the drop shadow under my name. That’s the thing about being a control freak: you wholly own the decisions you make, and you can never pass the blame onto anything except the passage of time.

But whatever I settle on will be imperfect and perfect in its own way. Perfect because it will be mine.

…And yours.

Cover Art

I am going to keep this short, because I am a few glasses of vino in... :) But I couldn't wait to share the news:

I just got a reply from an amazing photographer that she is willing to license me a piece of her work for the cover of Secernere, and at a very workable price. I am so stoked that my heart is actually beating faster!

I will have final cover art soon, and I'll post it here first!

Calm Before the Storm

Wednesday night was the screening for my team’s (Liquid Squid’s) entry into the Baltimore 48-Hour Film Project, and my team got together for dinner before the movie. Liquid Squid’s team leader is one of my oldest and greatest friends, and also happens to be one of my beta readers. There were 11 or 12 of us at the dinner, and the obvious topic was the screening and moviemaking in general. As much as I wanted to, it would have been rude of me to pull my friend aside and ask about her progress on Secernere.

I’ve run into this several times already. I’d given my book to two early readers, and then never heard anything from them. I didn’t want to be a bother; I thought it was already generous of them to volunteer to read it, and I thought they should get all the time they need. But at a certain point, I realized they weren’t going to either 1) start or 2) finish the book, and I would have to move on. It was frustrating, and a little damaging to my ego. I mean, if I can’t get my friends even to read it—let alone devour it in one night with a flashlight under the sheets—how on earth can I expect to sell it to anyone else?

Thankfully, my friend gave me a stage whisper of an update across the table: “I really want to talk to you about your book, but I know it’s not the time!” She had practically read my mind, and I was so grateful to her for bringing it up so I didn’t have to. She then told me she was about halfway through and was “preparing a full report.”

A full report?

There went my fantasy: my betas would respond much like my mom did with an “attagirl” and a few pointed-out typos. I’d fix the small things and one step closer to the final product. I think I’ve been deluding myself that there isn’t going to be (any more) real, hard work ahead of me. But I’d also be deluding myself if I said I didn’t mind putting out a flawed product.

If I follow the schedule I set up for myself, I have until early August to get the narrative locked down so I can lay out the interior and get a copy to my proofreader. I still think that’s reasonable, if I really buckle down. The hard part about right now is the waiting. I don’t want to start any round of editing until I get all beta comments back. I can start the interior templates, I can continue to mess around with the cover, I can take more footage for the Kickstarter video. But nothing feels like it matters until I get the book itself locked into final. So I’m mostly just waiting.

It’s like the calm before the storm.

How Do You Know When Your Book is Ready? Part 2 of 2

We’ve covered why I don’t think rejection of book ≠ lack of book quality. For the second part of this post, I’m going to stop ranting about the publishing industry (for once!) and actually talk about my writing. The original question was, “How do you know when your book is ready?” To me, the underlying question is, “How do you have enough confidence in your writing to put it into print without getting a thumbs up from a reliable third party (e.g., a publishing house)?”

These are my answers, and they are actually pretty similar to those of Rachel Starr Thompson, who posted a 4-part series of entries on this same topic.

1) I’ve been writing for a very long time. There are only two ways to get good at writing: Write more, and read more. I do a lot of both. As Rachel explains, when you write and read a lot, you develop an ear for what sounds good and what sounds, well, bad. I also used to be a professional book editor. I’ve edited 11 published books, and 6 more as a freelancer (pub status unknown). I’ve also worked with editors on my own writing. I write and edit professionally on a daily basis, so I am constantly in practice. Basically, writing and editing are second-nature to me by now, so I have a certain level of skill with words that allows me to do with them what I want. They don’t obey every time, but I do have a reasonable amount of success achieving the results I’m seeking with my writing.

I’m also educated about technique. I have studied creative writing in academic and personal settings for over 16 years. I have a degree in writing, specializing in fiction, and I have read numerous books on structure, editing, punctuation theory, publishing, and more. Not only do I know “best practices” in writing, but I understand why they’re important and how to apply them. You can never master a technique until you understand why it works—and when you can (and should) break the rules.

I won’t say I’ve mastered the novel, but I’ve written three or so long-form pieces, and I’m getting to know this form pretty well. I have also had multiple shorter works published, so I know publication quality is not an extreme reach for me.

2) I’ve rewritten Secernere from beginning to end twice. Some sections have been rewritten 4 or 5 times. This ain’t no first draft. I’ve put the most recent draft through the editing ringer twice. Now I have beta readers looking at my latest draft, and I’ll incorporate any feedback that resonates with me, and edit again. I have lined up a professional copyeditor to go through the final draft for typos—because I admit to being blind to those at this point.

I call editing a funnel, because on each pass there should be less to do. Developmental editing, which usually occurs after the first rough draft, takes a massive amount of work, and the changes will be substantial. I’ve done this on several authors’ novels when the backbone of the story was there, but the meat just wasn’t hanging right. After you’ve gone through large-scale developmental editing and gotten to another complete draft, you really oughtn’t need to do it again. If you find yourself continually re-jiggering large swaths of your book, you may have a bigger underlying problem in your premise that needs to be addressed before you can ever dream of getting the words right.

Once developmental editing is done, you can move onto editing on a smaller scale, usually at the chapter or scene level. Then comes line editing, where you get the words right. And finally, copyediting or proofreading, where you make sure all your T’s are crossed and your I’s are dotted.

I have needed “narrower” editing with each pass, and that makes me feel like I have been driving toward a quality product. I’m not just putting any old thing out there; I’m going out with a book that has been revised and improved numerous times.

3) I’ve read every single word of the novel out loud. If you have ever sought out writing advice, I’m sure you’ve come across this tip before, and it is one I stand by. Read every word aloud to yourself. It’s the only way you’ll find things that sound funny—not funny haha, but funny off. It’s easy for your brain to fill in the holes when you’re reading by sight (illusions of visual perception), but when you read out loud, you’re much more likely to catch mistakes and missteps.

4) My mom read it and she loved it. Just kidding. Well, not kidding. She did read it and she did love it. But that is not a valid reason to think my writing is ready for print.

5) I’m satisfied. I’m ready to move on. Yes, I could work on it some more. And maybe some more. I could probably fiddle with it forever, and never let anyone see it because I don’t think it’s perfect. But that’s not what I want to do. I don’t think any author is every 100% happy with their writing (if they are, they’re deluding themselves). I’ve been reading The Shining lately, and even the King says in his introduction that there are parts he would change now. But the writers who have writing in print knew when to stop, say “enough,” and move onto the next project. The bottom line is that you can’t get it published if you never stop working on it. For me, I think my book is ready for the next stage of its life, to move out of my house and get a job. And I know I’m sure as hell ready to move onto the next project.

Having the confidence to self-publish is a mix of talent, ego, guts, and willful, blissful ignorance: it’s about having a pretty good grasp of what you’re good at, being more que sera sera about what you can’t change, and not thinking about all the bad things that could happen.