To those out there who are authors, like me, I have a question.
Do you get as sick and tired as I do of people not taking you, as an indie author, seriously? As if publishing a book is so simple ANYONE can do it? Let me give you one example. I will refer to her as Jane (for the obvious reason, which you will have to remind yourself of later, she is a real person). This is a true story that I think my fellow authors out there will find amusing, if not a bit sad.
Jane, who is in her late sixties, has been a friend of my mom’s since their childhood (huge back story that doesn’t pertain here has found Mom trying to keep her distance from Jane over the years). To say she is a bit out of touch and quite clueless of the current world is an understatement. One day, Jane calls up my mom and says, “I need money, so I’ve decided to write a book. I have had an idea in my head for years to write a book about the cute little things that kids say. It shouldn’t take me long to write it, then I’ll get a publisher to publish it and I can make a lot of money.”
My mom listens, flabbergasted. Jane continues, “It won’t take me long to write it I don’t think. I’m gathering little quotes from parents about the cute things kids say. Do you have any? Could you call Melissa and see if she’ll supply me with a few?”
Side note, two of my 3 sons are autistic, ages 19 and 14 and while I have tons of funny stories about the things they say, none would be of any interest to anyone else because no one would get the inside jokes but our family. On top of that, I wouldn’t want to share them with the public anyway. So no, I wasn’t going to help her. Moving on…
Over time, Jane continues to inundate Mom with a constant barrage of calls with the progress of “the book”. The biggest obstacle, Jane doesn’t use a computer, doesn’t even have one. And her son, who lives with her, can barely go further than checking basic email on his first laptop, which he got about 3 months ago (he’s in his late forties). Therefore, she has come up with the assumption that Mom is going to type up the book from her handwritten manuscript. Mom is trying to find a way to get out of it without hurting her feelings. I argue that, since Jane wasn’t so considerate about employing her to do this (unpaid of course), then Mom shouldn’t worry about being nice.
Finally, Jane talks to Mom a couple of days ago and says, “I’m so frustrated. I tried to get a hold of a book of Book Publisher listings and they wanted $15 dollars for it. I can’t pay that kind of money.” Then she says, “When I’m done with my manuscript, I’ll have to get directions to your house because I can’t afford postage to mail it to you.” Okay, if that’s not bad enough, in the course of these weeks, Jane finds out that I’m an author, so she proceeds with:
Jane: “How in the world did Melissa get published?” (as if to say, ‘SHE got published?’)
Mom: “She self publishes her books.”
Jane: “How much does that cost?”
Mom: “She has some expense, not much because she does everything herself.”
Jane: “Does she make any money?”
Mom: “No, not really, though she has a good following. She does it because she loves writing and doesn’t expect to make much out of it.” (which is true, if you go into writing to make money, you’re pretty much headed for a huge disappointment)
Jane: “Oh, I can’t do that then, I have to make more money than that.”
Okay, answer me this…how can one, who can’t even afford the price of postage to send a manuscript to be typed, expect to send the typed manuscript to multiple publishers? The woman is indeed clueless about how publishing works at all, much less in the age of digital technology. The majority of publishers want electronic submissions. When the time comes for Mom to type the manuscript (if you’d call it that), Mom said she was giving Jane a reality check, big time.
This leads back to my original question – Do you feel you get taken seriously? When I tell people that I’m an author, writer or novelist (I’ve used them all, thinking one might sound more official than the others), I don’t hear, “That’s great!” Or “Good for you, that’s hard work.” No, I hear, “I thought about putting out a book. I used to write stuff when I was a kid.” Or “Must be nice to have the time to sit around and write stuff all day.” REALLY? So if you think it’s so simple to publish a book, go right ahead.
Sure, it’s relatively simple to publish a book, it’s hard to publish a high quality, 350 page novel. I do EVERYTHING myself, all the formatting, cover design and promotion. Publishing with Kindle, free. Publishing with B&N, free. Publishing with CreateSpace, kinda free if you don’t pay for a proof to be sent. The major cost for me are little things like paying for royalty free images for my cover designs, my website expense, etc. Still, while it’s no huge monetary expense to publish, it’s a HUGE time expense for formatting the paperback, getting it in different e-book formats and most of all, writing the thing to begin with. People who assume that just because I’m self published that it’s the ‘easy way out’, they just need to go about their own business and shut up. I can guarantee that those who make that assumption would be calling me for advice every step of the way. Even a couple of my own friends want to try writing a book. Uh, okay. All I can say is go for it and see how long it takes before you’re emailing me with questions. I knew how hard it would be going in and that didn’t even cover how hard it really TURNED OUT TO BE.
Is it so wrong for me to not tell Jane or anyone else any of my publishing secrets? After all, no one was there to do it for me. Self publishing is great because I couldn’t get published otherwise, still…just because people CAN publish your own book, doesn’t necessarily mean they SHOULD. Don’t even get me started on that… (reference: 50 Shades of Grey)
That's great Mom...but I have pie. 