I was asked today by R.M. Gilmore, what did I feel was my biggest hurdle in self-publishing? What is one thing I feel would change my current level of success for the better? She will be at the 2016 Great Valley Bookfest talking about the Business of Indie-Publishing at 11:30 AM.
I now know both sides of the coin, having worked for Hot Tree Publishing for over a year and a blogger almost five, but until I experienced the publishing process from the author’s point of view, I had never understood why an author would give up royalties to someone else. I TOTALLY get it now. I found publishing to be a horribly stressful experience. I actually gained ten pounds and had two panic attacks over the two months before release. The setup of creating accounts, multiple accounts, the creating eye catching content to upload to the sellers, then you have the professional edit processes (which I HIGHLY recommend), covers, endless promotion(which is hours a day), graphics that will grab the reader’s attention… And that isn’t scratching the surface. For someone who has a very full and stressful life outside of the book world, it was a lot more than I expected. Keep in mind, I am a blogger and work for an editor and publisher. I had and amazing support team of friends and co-workers, along with general knowledge the book world and publishing process. That is something many would not have and it was still ridiculously overwhelming. A publisher has multiple people and better resources doing the job of one indie author.
If I could change one thing it would be a system, one place, which had everything. You upload the information once and it takes care of the rest. And one app that you type in the post then select all the social media you wish and hit send, once.
Be sure to check out the event if you can, it looks to be an amazing time.
