It's Reunion Sunday

Happy Reunion Sunday, everyone. What? This holiday's not on your calendar? Ridiculous. Unacceptable.

Well, it is Reunion Sunday. And you celebrate by asking me for a free copy of my ebook Reunion. I celebrate by giving you one. All you have to do is promise me a fair review of the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Goodreads. Or any combination of the three.

We are celebrating this year because the second Jackson Cane story is getting ready for release. The plan, right now, is that Scouts will be available by the middle of March. Ahead of that release I'd like to see Reunion with a few more reviews. Sort of prime the pump, if you will. You can help me do that by celebrating Reunion Sunday. Ask me for whatever version you need and I'll email you one. I've got the mobi files for your Kindle and the epub files for your Nook or other ereader.

I will say that I'm not asking you for a big investment in time. This is an 8,000-word story. You can read it in an afternoon. You can read it in an hour.

What am I asking you to read? Here's the description.

Jackson Cane is a cop. Well, sort of. Cane and his coworkers call themselves the Freak Police. They chase certain undesirables back to where they belong. Cane's the best of the bunch, but his latest case is going to bring him face to face with someone that he's not sure he wants to see again. 

So help me celebrate. Ask for a copy of Reunion. Leave a comment on this post with your email address and the version you'd like. I'll get it to you.

Or if that makes you uncomfortable, email me at jarrettrush@yahoo.com. Let me know which version you need, and I'll get it to you.

Thanks in advance. And Happy Reunion Sunday, everyone.

A quick freebie update

I haven't done one of these in a while. My free short story, Consider Us Even, is within 100 downloads of breaking the 2,000 barrier. A more specific number is 67 downloads.

For those that don't know, it takes place in the same world as Chasing Filthy Lucre. It features fist fights and data addicts.

Want to give it a try? You can find it at Barnes and Noble, the Sony E-Reader Store and Smashwords.

An even swap

Chasing Filthy Lucre is stuck. It's been out for almost a year now and the reviews it's received have been good. Really good, actually. But I could use more. When you are doing the publishing yourself you could always use more reviews. Can never have enough.

Back to being stuck. Over at Amazon.com, Chasing Filthy Lucre has had nine reviews for a few months now. They are all 4 and 5 stars. But it's killing me to see it stuck at nine. I want that tenth review. Heck, I want 20 reviews. I want 30.

Same goes for my newest story, Reunion. That story needs more than the one review it has right now.

I don't know how to get more reviews other than offering a free book to anyone who agrees to read either book and then provide an honest review at Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble.

Interested? Email me at jarrettrush@yahoo.com and I'll send you a copy of either book in whatever format you need. 

Or leave a comment here with a way to get in touch with you and which format you need.

Thanks in advance.

A look ahead to 2012

I know I was supposed to write this post some time last week and post it yesterday. But I've been enjoying spending time with Gina while she's been on Christmas break from school. Besides, it doesn't seem like a new year until Monday when everyone goes back to work.

I haven't had a lot of motivation to write much here, especially nothing that looked back at 2011. It was a weird year for me. There were a lot of downs. I lost my aunt in January and my grandmother in October. I lost my job in September. But there was one really huge up in 2011. In October, Gina found out she was pregnant. That sort of helped gloss over all of the bad stuff. It sets up 2012 to be my best year so far.

On the writing side of things, 2011 wasn't too bad. I published two stories, and hit almost 200 sales. I started to build a readership. I've got a few plans for 2012. I'm not calling them resolutions. The only resolutions I've made are with Gina and probably of little interest to those of you who are here. The plans I've made are goals.

1. Publish the second book in the New Eden series.
2. Write and publish the rest of the Jackson Cane series. It's five stories right now, and I've got the second almost finished.  The remaining three are loosely plotted. They should be easy to write.
3. To keep building my readership. Or following. Or presence. Or platform. Or whatever they call it. That's going to include blogging more regularly. Tweeting more and with the right people. When I started using Twitter I was getting so much more out of it. I'm not getting that now and I really think it's because I'm not using it like I should. I'm planning on making some changes there, but that's another blog post for another time.

Pretty simple goals, honestly. And all stuff I can control. Notice, there are no sales goals on there. That's because I can't control those. I can make sure people know about my books, and I try to do that, but I can't make them buy. But, hopefully, if I can be successful at goal No. 3 then sales will follow.

So, auf wiedersehen to 2011 and guten tag to 2012. It's going to be a good year. I'm going to be a dad.

A December goals update

I promised to keep you posted on my ambitious December goals. I needed to sell roughly 60 books in the month to hit the 200 mark for total sold. It was ambitious, but I was hopeful that I could do it. What good are goals if they are easily accomplished?

The month started out well. At the end of the first week I'd sold five books. That's a number some would sneeze at, but for me in a week that's great. However, it wasn't going to be good enough to make my goal. Sales needed to pick up the pace. They didn't. At the end of week one I was at five sales for the month. That's where I was at the end of week two. And that's where I am today. Five.

Unless things pick up considerably that last week of the month after everyone has opened their new Kindles, Nooks, and other e-readers, I'm going to miss the goal by a country mile.

I know there's very little I can do to actually influence sales in a significant way. A lot of the advice from people I trust is to not think too long about sales. Instead, focus on writing the next book. One book sells the other, and until you have a good-sized back list then sales are more likely going to be slower. But I promised some updates so consider yourself updated.

Laying out my ambitious December goals

I've got a few ideas for more posts and I'll write those soon when I have a chance. But let's stick with the begging theme for now. Well, not so much begging as informing. I've got a couple sales goals for December. Thought that since I shared total sales last post I'd share sales goals this time.

Adding all my sales since March, I'm at 144 books overall. Not bad, but I like round numbers. I'd really like for this year to end with 200 books sold. That means I'd need to have, for me, a record month. I'd need to sell 56 books in December. Is it ambitious? Absolutely. But what else do I have to do? I still don't have a day job. Might as well pour some of the time I'm not using to look for a job into trying to sell books, right?

So you may see me pushing my books hard. Lots more tweets. Hopefully more interviews and guest posts that I'll be pushing you toward. It'll be whatever I can think of that might move some books.

And if you wanted to help me push the books, please do. Retweet my tweets if you follow me on Twitter. Leave a review at Amazon and Barnes and Nobleif you've read and liked either or both of my books. Host me if you have a blog. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm up to writing a few guest posts or doing interviews.

I'll try to keep you updated on how sales are going throughout the month,.

Sample Sunday: Chasing Filthy Lucre

I haven't participated in a Sample Sunday in a long time. Here's a little something from Chasing Filthy Lucre. Hope you like it. If you do, leave a comment. If you really like it then buy a copy. It's in all the usual spots. For direct links click the "Where to read me" tab at the top of the page.

 There was an older gentleman who spent his nights sitting in the lobby watching the people pass on the street and reading a book. He couldn't sleep and he'd rather be downstairs than up in his apartment. At least he told me that’s why I always saw him when I came in at night. A nice guy. Never said more than a few words to me.

“Good evening, Mr. Rexall,” he said when I’d come in late.

“Please,” I’d say, “call me Weber.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Rexall.”

That was it, our entire exchange. It always made me smile. He was there when I got home that night carrying my haul from Raul’s.

I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I sat the bags down in front of my door and fished in my pocket for my keys. Inside, I sat the bag from Raul's on the kitchen counter. If this were a few years earlier, I would have plugged in as soon as I was inside my apartment. The port in my arm would have itched, would have begged me to put it to use.

There was a wire straight from the wall, added as a convenience years before I moved in. Easy data access for anyone with a terminal. I’d had it converted to my own personal hot jack. Plug in. Heat up. Pass out.

Plugged into the feed, I could forget about life for a few minutes. The experience started as a tingle near the port where the wire connected to my arm. It started like something crawling under your skin but quickly turned to a burn that rushed across the entire body. For a few minutes it was uncomfortable. You wanted to pull off your skin. But, if you could wait -- if you could push through the hurt -- your body would settle into the rush of data that was assaulting every last nerve. You would calm. You couldn’t hear anything. You couldn’t think anything. You just were. For your time on the wire you didn’t have to deal with life in the present or remember life in the past. All of those things you’d seen or done were gone. They weren’t affecting you anymore. That was the appeal. That’s why so many soldiers were the first to abuse the technology.

When someone said they were "on the wire," the wire referred to was the one that ran from your port to your brain, not the one from the source to your port, although that’s what most people thought. It was an understandable confusion.

It was a technology developed by a team of Dutch doctors and scientists. Exactly how it worked I couldn’t tell you, but it’s made up of three parts.

There’s the port. It’s typically inserted into the arm, but really it could go anywhere. The older a person was the more discrete the location of their port. The younger, the more visible. Many kids were opting for a port in the neck. The thinking was that the shorter the distance from the port to the brain, the more intense the sensation. How much more intense the experience needed to be, I wasn’t sure.

The second element was the wire itself. It’s a fine piece of microfilament that ran from the port to the brain and the third element, the net.

A net, also made of microfilament, was woven into the different parts of the brain. The digital came into the port, ran along the wire, and then spread across the net and into the user's head.

The original applications were military. Soldiers were given their mission details with the port. They’d plug in at night and wake the next morning with their orders and all pertinent background information.

The original ports came with a governor that controlled the flow of data to the brain. Hackers cracked those soon after ports were approved for commercial use.

Mine was a military unit, first generation. I had it cracked in a small computer shop two blocks from base as soon as I was discharged. Done by a hack in a back room. Me laying on a table and him plugging a beaten up laptop into my port.

He punched some keys and I laid there and felt the flush of digital for the first time. It started with a tingle that ran up my arm and into my shoulder. It crossed over to my neck and then into my head. It became an intense heat that left me dizzy and light headed.

From my head, it ran down my chest, past my waist, and into my toes. For the first time I felt my head tip back and my mouth drop open. I could no longer think. Nothing was in my head. All the things I’d seen and done had been replaced by the heat of the data.

After thirty minutes and twenty bucks I was on the wire.

Autographed print copies available

I finally set up everything needed to sell autographed print copies of Chasing Filthy Lucre. It's the box over there at the top of the right column. So if you were waiting with bated breath, wait no more. Click on the "Buy Now" button. I'll send one your way.

Coming soon

A little sneak preview of something I've got planned for release soon. Hopefully before Thanksgiving. Should be 99 cents. It's a little different for me. No sci fi in this one but there is a bit of paranormal.This is the cover. Let me know what you think.

Get to know SM Reine

This week's interview is with SM Reine. She's a great writer, a wonderful cover artist, and, now, a publisher. Her new book, Death's Hand, comes out next week. She has a great blog with great tips. Take a couple of minutes and get to know SM Reine.

Give us the elevator pitch, not for your book, but on you. Give us the down and dirty on SM Reine.

By day, I'm immersed in information systems (mainframe and server operations, to be exact), general office work, and motherhood. By night, I'm sleeping. I cram writing and publishing somewhere in between all of that.

Now, how about your books. What do we need to know about Six Moon Summer, All Hallows Moon, and The 19 Dragons?

Six Moon Summer and All Hallows' Moon are in the same series. They're a refreshing take on werewolf mythology following a character named Rylie Gresham, who's this teenage vegetarian that ends up turning into a flesh-hungry monster. She's her own worst enemy. The 19 Dragons is a steampunk novella with a surrealistic fantasy bent... if I can get away with crossing that many genres.

You're a fantasy writer. I assume that means you're a fantasy reader. Have you always been and what is it about the fantasy genre that draws you in as both a reader and a writer?

I'm actually into speculative fiction at large. As a kid, I sharpened my teeth on writers like Tamora Pierce, KA Applegate, Christopher Pike, you name it. Of course, I also had a hearty dose of the classics-- HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle... Choking down realistic fiction is like trying to swallow rocks for me. I have no interest in it, although I couldn't tell you why. Maybe I'm too much of an airhead.

How about steampunk? You describe The 19 Dragons as a steampunk novella. Steampunk is a sub-genre that fascinates me. How did you get interested in it? And what's it like once you start writing a steampunk story?

Steampunk is something I discovered through movies and TV shows rather than literature. It's been one of my creative influences for years. For instance, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a great example of early steampunk. I should have known I was in trouble when I found myself lusting for the goggles and gloves worn by Caractacus Potts as a kid! 

But I found writing steampunk to be a harrowing experience. The subculture is huge. People will put so much money and time into adapting their appliances, fashion, and even their entire house to this elaborate Victorian aesthetic, and since I took a lot of artistic license with the genre, I was afraid of disappointing the fanatics. I really second- and third-guessed myself over The 19 Dragons for the weeks leading into its release. It turns out the fans are forgiving. The warm reception was pleasantly surprising.

I love your book covers. You do those yourself, at least as far as I know. What's your background in graphic design and, as far as covers go, what's your creative process like?

Thank you! Yes, I do all my covers, and I also offer inexpensive cover design for some of my indie friends. I've made covers for Kindle-bestselling writers like Heather Hildenbrand and John O'Brien. That said, I have no background in graphic design whatsoever. In the industry, I'm what's called a "self-taught Photoshop hack." Years of fiddling with personal photos turned into fiddling with stock imagery to create photomontages, and then it somehow became an important (and fun!) part of my career.

When I'm about to embark on a project, I spend time researching similar books and how their covers were designed. I focus primarily on recent and upcoming releases, although I also like to dig into the history a bit because what's fashionable in design is cyclical. Then I pick out hundreds of stock photos I think might fit the project and start whittling down concepts. I usually make at least 3-5 covers for any one book. It's horribly inefficient! My process is growing more streamlined as I mature.

What's the biggest problem you see with most book covers from indie authors and how can it be fixed?

The biggest issue I've seen is distorting photographs. A lot of sins are forgivable in the indie world, but when you have an image stretched to a different ratio, it looks horrible and it screams "unprofessional." Good typography also determines if your cover is effective or not.

OK, on to Red Iris Books. How did that come about and what's the plan for it?

I've been sitting on this business plan for a small, web-based publishing company for years. I actually went to college for business (which, as anyone can tell you, might be one of the less useful degrees you can obtain) and I developed this idea as I trudged through classes on accounting and marketing. Since then, I've been sitting around tweaking it as I see changes in the market, and dreaming of the day I would get the time and capital to make it happen. There will always be excuses to put off big decisions. It sounds cheesy, but becoming a mother made me realize how fleeting time is, and I decided I was done waiting.

I am currently building a platform as one of the best sources of dark fantasy for teen and adult audiences. In the next year, Red Iris Books will slowly open its doors to adding new authors, although it's going to remain extremely selective. I want to help foster careers. The idea is to provide quality control without requiring the authors to sacrifice creative control.

I was at a sci fi convention recently and I listened to a panel of small press publishers talking. Most everyone in the crowd wanted to know what the publishers were looking for. Specifics on lengths, rights purchased, services provided to the authors. If Red Iris were on that panel what would have the answers been?

I am currently acquiring projects by invitation only. As such, the answers to these questions vary widely depending on the needs of the individual author. In the future, I will open submissions to novel-length dark fantasy, and provide editing, formatting, cover design, and promotional services to the authors. Since we will be adding authors to the Red Iris family selectively, we will be able to give each project a lot of individual attention to ensure it reaches its full potential.

What's been the most surprising thing you've learned since starting Red Iris?

Publishing, as with all small businesses, is much more than a full time job. You don't take vacations. You don't get breaks. You can only get out of it as much as you put into it. Yet while it's definitely a tough industry -- and this economy makes it tough to get into selling a product -- everyone involved shares a passion for books, so I make quite a few friends and have a lot of fun while exhausting myself with work. Readers, reviewers, authors, and publishers-- they're all fantastic people. I couldn't do any of it without my support network.

A scenario: A benevolent tyrant comes to you and tells you he's going to ship you off to a small, unpopulated island. He hands you a bag that will hold just three books and tells you to fill it. Which books do you put in there and why?

Firstly, Peter Pan. That book is very special to me. I loved the adventure and fantasy of it as a child, but as I've matured, the book becomes a deep meditation on childhood, aging, and death. They say in the book that Peter takes children who have died partway to the afterlife so they aren't afraid on the journey. It's touching and frightening.

The second book I would take is the Lord of the Rings omnibus edition. Can I get away with that? I could hardly be much of a fantasy fan if I didn't adore the original work of fantasy by the master of world-building.

Finally, I would have to take the unabridged edition of The Stand by Stephen King. It's not my favorite of his books, but it's a heck of a read. If I'm going to be on some boring island (I hate beaches!) I need something long to distract me. Of course, every time I read it, I get a horrible cold and become convinced I'm going to die, but I'll consider that part of the excitement of being abandoned.

Give us a recommended reading list. What are a few underappreciated books you love that others need to know about?

Benighted by Kit Whitfield is the first book to come to mind.

Wrap this all up by telling us what's up next for you and what's next for Red Iris Books.

My next release is Death's Hand, which I'm using to launch Red Iris Books along with Angela Kulig's Skeleton Lake. It's the first in an urban fantasy series about an exorcist and her warlock partner who have gone into retirement, and what happens when old enemies catch up with them. After that, I have some very exciting things planned for the Seasons of the Moon series, but I don't want to talk about it too much yet. I'll be announcing a new author or two for Red Iris by summer 2012, and we'll be opening for submissions by the end of next year. These next few months are going to be very busy!

Thanks so much for having me!

A price change and an update

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, but Monday I'm going to do it. On Monday I'm raising the price of Chasing Filthy Lucre to $1.99.

I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. One, is I want to see if a price change, even on that's an increase can't boost sales a bit. Hopefully people who would buy at 99 cents will still buy at $1.99. I think they will. And maybe people who see the 99 cent price and associate that with low quality will take a chance on Chasing Filthy Lucre if it's a little more expensive.

The bigger thing, though, is that I feel like Chasing Filthy Lucre is underpriced for what it is. When I launched the novella in March, there weren't nearly the number of short stories available as there are now. Most of those stories range in length from 3,000 to 10,000 words. They are priced at 99 cents, just like my book. Difference is my book is twice as long as the longest short story. That says to me that I'm underpriced for what's out there now. Could I be wrong? Absolutely. If I am then I'll readjust the price back down. One of the nice things about doing this all myself is that I can experiment with price like this.

I'm telling you all this so you can grab a copy at 99 cents if you've been thinking about it but haven't done it yet.

UPDATE
Now a quick update about what's coming up at the blog. Look tomorrow for an interview with Neal Hock. He's a book reviewer and editor. He gives us some insight into what makes someone want to edit books. Then next Friday we talk with SM Reine. She's a writer, and just recently, a book publisher. She's running Red Iris books. She'll tell us about her new venture and a little about herself.

Why being indie is exciting

After getting a couple of comments on my previous post, I should probably say that I'm proud to be an indie author. It was a choice I made. If I didn't want to be an indie author I would still be writing and preparing to submit to agents. But I looked at the evidence out there, looked at my style of writing, and made this choice. I'm not ashamed to be going indie.

[SNIP] 

I wrote a long bit here about being indie that sounded very familiar. Got a few paragraphs in then realized I'd written it before. Decided I didn't want to bore anyone who'd already read that. If you haven't, read the older post here. We'll wait.

So now you know some reasons, but there are others. Here's one. I don't write at a length that's typically published by traditional houses. The longer I've been at this writing thing the more I've realized that the length I am the most comfortable with is something in the 25,000 to 30,000 word range. That length is typically considered a novella. That length is also something that's tough to get published. It would be about 80 or so published pages if done in book form. Not many publishing houses want that. The cutoff for them seems to be about 50,000 words, and even that's a little short.

Is a novella unpublishable? Of course not. Plenty get published. But how many of those are written by unknowns? Very few, I'd reckon. So my chances of getting the work I think I'm best at published by a traditional publisher seem pretty slim. But now, with ereaders and ebooks and self publishing, I have a way to get those stories in the hands of readers who might like them.

And that leads to another reason that being indie is exciting. Turn around time. Reasonably, with traditionally published books there is an 18-month lag from the book being purchased by a publisher to the book hitting the shelves. That's a killer. I have some big plans for the world I've created in Consider Us Even and Chasing Filthy Lucre. Plans that involve lots of stories set in that universe. Assuming I'm successful, an 18 month wait by readers between books would stifle any momentum. Eighteen months is plenty of time to forget all about that great book you read. Plenty of time to forget about the next book that's supposed to come out.

But going indie, I can control the date of the release of the books. How fast can I write, edit, and format? That's all that's keeping me from uploading something new. I'm in control.

Being indie also allows me to keep control over my stories and the direction of my series. I'm not one of those who thinks I know better than someone in the publishing industry. But I do know that I have a vision for how this series plays out. Going indie means I get to keep control of that, and that's something that's important to me. I'm weird like that.

The final thing that excites me about going indie -- well final thing for now, I'm sure I'll think of others -- is pricing. With the royalties that the book sellers are offering to authors who publish directly through them, it only takes a modest amount of success to make as much money as an indie author as you can on an average advance from a traditional publisher. So the argument that you can't make money going on your own is starting to be disproven. There are the wildly successful indie folks, like Joe Konrath and Karen McQuestion and Amanda Hocking. But under that level there are many, many indie authors who are having great success. Making money as authors. Doing what they love.

So, despite what my last post may have led some readers to believe, I like being an indie author. The good outweighs the bad. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't have concerns. I think there are several indie authors who can hold their own with the big boys, I just don't want their indie author friends to be the only ones who know that. I want them to break out of that label and just be an author.

Self publishing and editing

I've been in a bit of an editing mode lately, ever since the lightbulb moment actually. Now that I know the bigger story here I wanted to make sure that what I'd written was going to line up with what I am going to write.

I am trying to be very diligent with the editing. I want this thing to be squeaky clean before it gets put up for sale. I know that some errors may, and probably will, get through. But it won't be because I'm lazy. Unfortunatley lazy editing is one of the things that has given self publishing a bad name over the years. I was reminded of that reading a thread on the Kindleboards web site the other day. Some writers there took offense to another author saying most self published books were amateurish and unprofessional. Problem is that he was right. One of the reasons self published books have a reputation for being of lesser quality is a lack of proper editing. That's why I want Filthy Lucre to be a tight, well-told story that doesn't have any distracting errors that pull the reader from the tale.

You can read a little more on editing at Self Publishing Review. That's right here.

The WIP is up on Scrib'd

I've posted the first part of my current WIP on Scrib'd. I'd love to hear what everyone thinks. Like I mentioned last night, the second part is also done. Well, the writing is. Is till need to give it a hard edit and make those fixes. Then get it in the hands of some beta readers to look at it. Ugh, every time I think I am close to getting this thing done and uploaded for sale I think about all of the steps that are left.

Nothing I can do about it, though, other than to keep moving forward. And it would help me move forward if others could give part one a read and let me know what they think. It's 6,00 words and ends on a cliffhanger. So, if you are so inclined you can click the Scrib'd link on the right side and take a look.

Thanks in advance.

Why I changed my stance on self publishing

I mentioned earlier that I was going to try and explain my reasons for deciding to self publish my work. This is the first of what is probably going to be multiple posts on the subject. Get yourself something to eat and get comfortable. This is a long one.

WHY I DECIDED TO SELF PUBLISH

I joined the writers group I am currently with a year ago. When we started, one of the members said she was considering publishing some of her work herself. I told her that she was free to do whatever she wanted to do, but that self publishing wasn't something I was interested in. For me the only way to be a "real" writer was to write and polish a manuscript, send it off to agents hoping one of them will like it, hoping that agent can find an editor interested in taking on your book, then hoping that editor can convince his publishing company to buy the book. Once you get that far there is still another 18 month to two year wait before the book hits the shelves at a store nearest you. That's a lot of hoping and a lot of waiting. But that's how I thought it had to be done.

Besides, there was/is a stigma attached to those who self publish. They are considered, at least in some circles, as not being good enough. Self publishing was the route an author took when he or she couldn't get a book published through traditional channels.

Another thing. In nearly every case self-publishing meant your work wouldn't be available in book stores. The only place someone was going to find you was online. And when they did find you they were going to be asked to pay more than they would for a normal book.

So, on top of the stigma behind it, it just wasn't something that was going to make an author any money. If you were OK with that and just wanted to see your words on a bound page then self-publishing may have been a good way to go. But that's not the only thing I wanted. I wanted to make a living at writing. I wanted to have author be my job.

Then something changed within the last year. I went to my first writers conference. I went to sessions that were nearly all led by authors. In almost every session someone asked how the authors got their start, how they landed and agent. Every answer started with "Well don't use me as an example. I got lucky and ..." Every time they said that. For me that was incredibly discouraging. It told me that this business was a lot of luck. And I knew that, but it was discouraging that everyone who the organizers put in front of us didn't find their agent through the typical route. They didn't find them pitching to an agent at a conference. They didn't find their agents by sending query letters. They did it by getting lucky. I came away from the conference with a ton of great ideas and I learned so much about technique. But still, I was discouraged. Having author be my job seemed to be a farther off dream than I had realized.

So I came home and kept writing. I also started reading some blogs and poking around the internet and realized there was another option. There were people making money -- real money -- by self-publishing e-books. People like Joe Konrath and Zoe Winters, who I link to on the right side*. And I thought that if they could do it, then I could too. At least I could give it a shot. Self-publishing was a real possibility now because it was an opportunity to make my dream of being an author come true. I could make money doing this, something I couldn't do with self-publishing in the past. Well, at least the chances of doing it before e-book readers took off was smaller.

Now that e-readers like the Kindle, the Nook, and the iPad are gaining in popularity, more and more readers are having access to the online stores where e-books are sold. They can buy some books for as little as 99 cents, meaning they can take a chance on a author they don't know. And they get that book loaded onto their device instantly. No more inflated price for a book. No more having to wait days for it to come in the mail. You can sacrifice very little cash and have your new book in your hands in minutes. That's a game changer in self publishing, at least in my estimation.

I think as more people have success at this type of publishing the stigma that's associated with self-publishing will start to fall away. I think it already is in some ways. More writers are deciding that they'd like to go the independent route and control their own career, write what they want to when they want to, and, honestly, keep more of their money for themselves.

There are specific reasons (quicker to market, total control over my career, etc...) that I'll go into in other posts. But that's an explanation of why I've decided to self-publish. It's an opportunity to make real money at writing. I don't expect to have the success that Joe and Zoe and others right away. And it may never happen for me. But I have to try.

* I'd suggest giving their blogs a read. They're both very honest about how well they are doing and how much money they are making self-publishing to Kindle. They're also honest about how much work it is. Going this route isn't easy. It takes a lot of time and effort to make it work.