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Lately, there has been so much time devoted to writerly-type things and it has left me with little other time for sleeping, eating, maintaining a general state of cleanliness. Recently, I had to take a micro-break from some writing stuff to take care of things around the house; the place was beginning to look like a bad Tolkien map. There was the Leaning Pillars of Unwashed Dishware, the Stagnant Swamp of Soiled Linens and the Overflowing Wastes of Catbox Canyon. Apparently, in my neglect of all things domestic, there grew the "thing that shall not be named" in the crisper drawer of my refrigerator and the Blind Beast became increasingly destructive due to my inattentiveness. (I've never seen a house cat turn feral so fast! Just kidding, he's rather spoiled.)
So now that my domicile has been restored to some semblance of livability, I can return to the task(s) at hand. I might be putting the kibosh on "Midnight Society" submissions for a few weeks since I'm trying to get my edits finished up, start a new project and really focus on shopping my past projects around. So much to do, so little access to a time machine!
However, while I was busy domesticating, the world decided it still wanted to churn out some pertinent writing news. Recently, Amanda Hocking was in the news for her wildly successful collection of books that she self-published and has sold over 1 million copies through Amazon alone and has a traditional book deal now OH GOD! Well, not to upstage her, but an author by the name of John Locke bumped Ms. Hocking from the self-pubbed headlines for a bit.
No, not this John Locke.
And not this one either.
But this one!
Mr. Locke made headlines for joining the ranks of 1,000,000+ sellers on Amazon! So, of course, I went through the various jealous, proud, desperate, happy and ambitious-wanna-be-like-that-guy reactions. Then I came across a non-fiction book of John Locke's called "How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!" And I might be a sucker, but I bought it (and if P.T. Barnum is right, at least I'll have a lot of friends). I'm anxious to get into the book and see what advice he has, because, let's face it, he's DONE it already! From what I can tell by his book covers, one secret to his success is putting the bare legs of a lovely lady on the cover. How novel.
I'll post a review of Mr. Locke's advice once I get through it and start crushing my sales numbers. (Also, I'll have my review of David Moody's "Dog Blood" posted tomorrow! I'm very much looking forward to "Them or Us," the last segment in the "Hater" trilogy!)
Ok, more to the point. All this news of self-published authors selling over a million copies with nary an agent or publisher or fairy godmother has gotten me thinking strategy again. Do I go traditional and hope for the best, putting my fate into the hands of strangers? Do I go 100% self-pub and use my limited resources to get my work out there? Or do I do some combination of the two, hoping that my sales increase one way or the other?
I'm leaning towards this last option. But there are two ways (at least) to go about it: 1) Build a reader base through self-publication and hope that the big boys notice and then come looking for you (which is what happened to Ms. Hocking). Or, 2) Keep writing and sending queries and hoping for manuscript requests in the old fashioned model, but setting a time limit for responses to those requests before adding them to the virtual shelves for public consumption.
Again, leaning towards this last option, though I will see what Mr. Locke has to say about it. Perhaps my opinion on the matter will be swayed one way or another. We shall see!
Well thanks for stopping by! Be sure to check back tomorrow for my "Dog Blood" review and perhaps some hints of what I'm working on next. Oh and maybe we can discuss POTTERMORE!
~VK
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