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.
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.
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