Self-Published book – Carla Swafford, Author

Yep. My thoughts. Doesn’t mean they’re written in stone or scientifically correct, this is mostly just what I read and heard from others, and personal experience.

Sadly, I believe that the majority of the people who self-publish are like the thousands of people who went to California or Alaska to strike it rich. No. The gold wasn’t spread across the ground in nuggets. No. You couldn’t sit there and expect things to happen. Yes. There are people waiting to take your money and give little in return.

First a fact, I asked my editor and agent a simple question. Since the self-publishing boom, have you seen a decline, same amount, or increase in submissions? My agent said it was the same amount, while my editor said it had increased.*

I truly thought it would be less. So often I hear from those who are self-published that they will never go through a traditional publisher. God bless America! I think it’s great they have the choice.

But from the information my agent and editor kindly provided me, I understand that to mean writers still prefer the traditional route. No surprise there.

I know I prefer going with a traditional publishing house. Yes, I do have two novellas (short books) I self-published, and will probably do it again in the future for the heck of it. Overall, I rather have a publishing house handling/paying for the editing, cover, and distribution.

To me, self-publishing took too much time away from what I prefer to do: to be with my family and write. (I have a full time day job.) Plus to self-publish a book correctly, it takes money. I spent $500 per novella to prepare them for publication.

I’m sure there are dozens of stories out there about a person who didn’t pay for editing, did their own art work and published it only on Amazon and made thousands of dollars. Yet, at the same time those dozens have to be compared to the thousands upon thousands of people who self-published with little to no success.

Think of it this way, in 2013, there were 11 MILLION books for sale on Amazon (includes nonfiction). Presently, there are over 900,000 Kindle books. I like the playing field to be stacked in my favor, and personally, being published traditionally does that. Another way to do that is to improve my writing. It takes constant work.

Nothing is perfect. Nothing is easy. As Ray Bradbury said, “–hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice.”

And goodness, I do practice.

If you’re interested in checking out my books, click on a link below.

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Kobo Books

All Romance Ebooks

*Random House use to be an agent only publishing house until they started Loveswept back up (2011) as an e-book imprint. Now you can submit to Loveswept without an agent.

The other day I downloaded a book I was waiting for (read it in two days and it was regular size – a little under 400 pages I believe – it was wonderful – thank you, Cherise Sinclair) and while purchasing it, another book caught my eye and I bought it. (Addict, right?)

I have to say the other story was interesting but the number of errors were horrendous. They were simple mistakes that could easily been caught by a critique partner. Many times throughout the book (yes, I read the whole thing – see, I do try) the author placed a “was” and then a verb like: “He was stood and waved at the girl . . .”

To make matters worse, I had download three more books (thank goodness, two were free – feeding the addiction – HELP, NANCY!) from other new-to-me authors, and OMG! I can overlook a handful of errors, but they were riddled. The agony!!

Not saying that mistakes don’t happen in traditional published books (each one of mine had one or handful – sadly), but I seriously thought about asking for a refund on one of them it was so bad and I could tell this was a beginner-author, but decided to use it as a lesson.

ALWAYS “LOOK INSIDE” BEFORE DOWNLOADING!!!