There’s a famous fantasy author who’s said, on Quora, that self-publishing is usually a mistake. The reason being, of course, that approximately the first million words written should be thrown out. A self-published author may publish before their work is completely polished and ‘ready.’ Which is true! That’s exactly what I did!
The thing is, it’s only a mistake if it makes you unhappy. If, for example, someone writes ten books and the tenth has all the same flaws as the first, but they are completely satisfied with what they’ve done - good for them! If they have friends who support what they’re doing, even better.
I was writing in a vacuum for six years. My self-publishing adventure began in 2012 with my master’s thesis (nothing bad happened!), proceeded to a historical romance novel written during grad school (nothing bad happened!), and then expanded to contemporary romance (nothing bad happened!). I wasn’t getting much positive feedback, but nobody was pointing and laughing, either. I was having fun with it. And:
By the time I had two novels and six novellas published, I’d learned a few things.
Ever since then (this would be around 2015), I’ve been regularly revisiting the backlist. Nothing available on my bookshelf is in its original form. I’ve thrown out easily a million words. But I didn’t throw out all of those stories: I simply made them better.
We are still cranking away on the rebranding / redesign project for my backlist. I’m also branching out into large print paperbacks this year. But the BIG news (and it’s really big) is …
I have signed two contracts with JMS Books.
This means that in, oh, about a month, I will be a traditionally-published author as well as a self-published author. I am extremely excited!
How did this happen? Well, beginning in 2018, someone (my sister) started actually reading my stuff. This led to a series of professionalism grafts. In summer of 2022 I decided to query JMS* with a new book. Et voila! A contract!
I needed all of those millions of rewritten, discarded, revised, changed, re-imagined words to get to this point. I am not at all sorry that I will go into my next decade of publishing with a substantial backlist, because I’m not embarrassed by anything that’s available right now. None of that work was wasted, and now if someone likes the new book they have other titles of mine to try. I didn’t throw everything into a pit just because a traditional publisher didn’t want it.
This year will see few (possibly zero) self-published new works, but I’ll continue to launch things. And when my first book comes out from JMS, you can bet I will be right here yelling about it.
*curious about JMS? They publish a number of authors I enjoy & admire, including (in no particular order) Ellie Thomas, K.L. Noone, Pat Henshaw, A.L. Lester, Clare London, and Nell Iris.