How People Are Watching My Challenge…
Like It’s A Car Wreck…
Mouth open, saying nothing, not believing it is happening.
You know the feeling.
My challenge of 75 major books in my 75th year just sort of smacks one too many belief systems for most writers.
Interestingly enough, in all my years in traditional publishing, all the hundreds of anthologies I got invited into by top editors, not once was I offered a collection of my short fiction. And now, thanks to indie publishing, I am going to do 53 or 54 of them. Tonight I finished up a 51,000 word science fiction collection that the backers of the recent Kickstarter will get in a few weeks.
I find it interesting that so many writers I used to know back in those traditional publishing days just sort of stick their noses in the air at doing their own books, even though the offers for their books from traditional publishers dried up years ago. That’s why I “used to know them.”
To me, this is finally freedom from all the crap of that old publishing world.
I can write what I want, publish what I want in the form I want, do covers I want that will actually sell, and find thousands of new readers for my work. Oh, and don’t forget, I now make a lot more money with my fiction, both short stories and novels, than I ever did in traditional publishing.
And the 40K Seminar can take a few more. See the information on recent posts. Starts next Monday and you have a free book to read between now and then.
5 Comments
Emily
I find it quite inspiring and empowering, since it really highlights just how “small” the publishing world wants to make their authors and how dependent they want to make you feel on them. I think your challenge does a really great job in highlighting the real power of imagination and how courage and daring, values that seem so antiquated in today’s world of cunning and networking, can pave its own way through things. I don’t expect myself to necessarily get the same results as you do, given that I haven’t paid my dues for all these years, but I have felt the freedom to find my own way through things after watching and learning from you for all these years.
dwsmith
Emily, you got it. There is no right way or one way. Just your way. The key for each of us is to find and follow the way that works for each of us.
Suzan Harden
No, not like a carwreck. With amazement at the possibilities. With understanding the need for pushing myself a little but more each day, each month, and each year. With the need to grow the library of my own works until they fill bookshelves.
And with a little relief of getting the damn voices out of my head! LOL
Vincent zandri
Are there really that many trad genre published authors left Dean? I did a small unscientific polling of the top 100 books on the zon in “Pulp Fiction.” I didn’t get to a trad published book until somewhere around no. 30, and even that was with a small, no advance press that are springing up all over the place until they quickly go belly up. Same for hardboiled mystery, noir, and other similar genres. I used to be one of those trad pub’d authors who would never consider indie publishing other than just for kicks. But I changed my tune complelety after Covid hit and the industry all but crashed and burned. Like a fellow prolific buddy of mine who pub’d with me at Thomas & Mercer said recently on SM: when trad can provide me with the same or better money I’m making now indie, I’ll give it another go. He added a requirement of a minimum advance of mid-six figiures. Any takers? Not!
dwsmith
Vincent, almost none, you are correct in my watching as well. What I was meaning was old “friends” who had been top bestselling trade authors who now couldn’t give a book away and still won’t go indie. Gives you an idea of why they were writing in the first place, huh? (grin)