Merry Christmas

Just wishing everyone a Merry Christmas on this fine Wednesday afternoon.  My family is planning to go to my dads this year, all of us kids are here and we are going to do Christmas like we did when were kids, with our kids and parents.  Were sleeping over, playing games, eating home made chicken noodle soup and just having a blast.  I am really excited for it.
I don't what your traditions are, but I hope you guys have a blast doing everything, and hope you get to spend time with loved ones.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Visit from published author Cortney Pearson

Last night at our local NaNoWriMo meeting, we had a special appearance from self published author Cortney Pearson who talked to us about her journey to becoming published.  Here are some notes from her class. 

RNR- Redo and Resubmit, meaning they like what they have seen but they want certain things fixed.

Beta Readers- volunteers to read and review/edit if you ask them to on a certain subject like does everything connect, does the relationship fit?...

She went through an made pros and con lists for both traditional publishing and self publishing.

Traditional Publishing PROS:

Possible Advance

Printed books/ books on shelves

Editor invested in your story

Team of marketing and publicity experts

Have the repute  to be able to say I have representation from so and so…

Possible book tours/signings.

CONS:

Tons of waiting

Rejections

Split income with agents and publishers, publishers get the majority.

No say on cover

Agents have many clients and you get pushed aside

Despite marketing team, you still have to do your own marketing

Slow release schedule

If your book doesn’t do well, they can pull it from the shelf

More waiting

No guarantee that everything I write will get out there

Self publishing PROS:

Total control

Minimal waiting

A choice in cover design

Books will never go out of print

I can publish what I want

Once investment is made back, all money goes to me

Control over marketing

Control over price

I can publish whenever I want

Huger potential for making money-more lucrative

Time management

No more querying

Join the throng of published writers sooner and display books on my blog

Move forward with my writing career instead of doing the same thing I’ve been doing for years

Possibility of getting noticed by an agent should my books do well

CONS:

No books on store shelves

Pay to have editor/cover/marketing

No audio or foreign rights

No NYT bestseller list

No Agent-but I could

Venturing into the scary unknown

Time management

So all in all, there are more positives to self publishing than traditional, depending on who you are.  These lists are different for everyone.

She also noted that when you do start, have back up books so that you can publish one, right after the next, between a couple months between each, because depending on which company you went through for self publishing, your book stays at the top of the lists, if you publish your books within a window of 60 or 90 days.   

That goes the same with traditional publishing.  Whenever you do, they usually sign  you up for a 3 book contract anyways, which take a year each before they are officially published, and it will help keep the flow going.

The top best sellers right now are Romance, Paranormal, Thrillers and Mysteries.   So think of which genre your book fits in when you are publishing.  Her book Phobic is under horror, but she could have put it under thriller or paranormal.   

One of the downsides that are worth it in the end, to self publishing, is you have to foot the costs for anything, like editing, cover photo if you don’t do it yourself and so on. 

She had her cover done for her as well as editing, because no matter how good you yourself are at writing, you will always miss things, and it’s good to have a professional take a gander at it to make sure.

She published through CreateSpace, which for all those of you who have winner goodies from Nano, will be able to see a goodie code from them.  Take the opportunity to check them out.  Her books are a per demand publishing.  Meaning nothing is printed until it is bought.  So she doesn’t have to worry about any upfront costs just to get some inventory made for anyone who wants to buy her book.  She merely sits back and let’s CreateSpace worry about getting them printed.  Which is an ease for anyone. 

Her main job is marketing, and continuing to write her awesome books, which she already has one underway to be published in March.  We are so excited for her.  And we really appreciate her coming out and telling her story to us.    It was very helpful, and definitely helped me make some decisions for my future books.  I hope everyone else who attending enjoyed it and got something out of it.