Self-Publishing Has Gotten A Little Crazy

So I'm self-publishing this novel called "Why Is Crater Lake So Blue.'' By all accounts - and I do mean ALL - this is the silliest thing a self-publisher can do. Never going to work, they say. But it's too late to be a negative Nellie now.

Actually, the book could be printed next week and sold but that would assure certain failure. The only chance it has is if an army of book publicists spend the next four to six months creating buzz so stores will order it and then hopefully people will buy it when it's released in July. Four to six months sure seemed like a long time when I started this project. But I see now that every day will be required to try to find ways for one more person to hear about the upcoming release.

There are Advanced Review Copies (ARCs) to print and send out. There are authors to track down and beg to do prepublication book reviews...

By the way at this moment that is the biggest factor in whether this novel will be successful or not. Doesn't matter if it's a great story or if the cover design is beautiful. If there aren't any positive reviews on the back cover of the next group of ARCs a wholesaler might not carry the book, independent books stores that depend on books selling won't buy it, and the top reviewers won't take it seriously. End of story.

You can't even afford to really think of all the other marketing things that need to be done in month 3 and 4 if you don't have those prepub reviews. This is an odd business.

Oh, that army of publicists is actually one free-lance PR person, me and maybe one other. A little bit of pressure wouldn't you say.

In the midst of all this angst a nice thing happened last week. I received the rough sketch copy version of a children's picture book that my writing partner and I wrote. Ginger Nielsen is the artist. She spent a lot of time on the research and it really shows. While there's work to be done with our little giraffe book getting to see those illustrations in rough book form made up for all the annoying self-publishing things that happened that week.

Michael LaLumiere