Tag: self-publishing

Writing–Of Yard Sales and Self-Publishing

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Yard sale on Green Street in .

I had a yard sale last Saturday. I spent a week getting everything together, cleaning it off, pricing it, and getting the word out. Come Saturday, I put everything out and put up the signs.

I sold exactly one thing, made 50 cents (which wasn’t even mine because the sole thing I sold was something of my dad’s), and got a sunburn.

As I was packing everything away feeling like a failure, I realized that this yard sale attempt was a lot like my self-publishing venture.

I put a lot of work into my little book of short stories. I edited them, formatted them (several different times depending on the requirements of the place I was publishing it at), designed the cover. I did my best to make it look as professional as possible. I put the word out.

And I’ve made about 10 bucks all told.

My biggest failure in both of these ventures was promotion. I didn’t have the money to take out an ad in the paper or  pay for the marketing services offered by Lulu. Instead, I relied on word of mouth and social networking. Which is fine. My reach is a bit limited, but it’s still a reach. I have to hope that the people I tell then tell other people who tell other people and the people being told come to my sale or check out my little book.

And that’s the problem with a limited reach. The people I tell don’t necessarily tell anyone else. They don’t always look at the book or even care about the sale. And the same can be said of the people they tell if they do bother to tell them.

Relying so much on other people when dealing with something as subjective as books or yard sales seems to be a recipe for failure on my part. I’m not a natural salesman and I don’t have a huge fanbase. I’m putting my success into the hands of people that don’t have anything invested in it. In fact, a few of those people probably would prefer that I fail.

It’s a frustrating thing for me as there are times when I’d really like to be in total control of everything to put so much in the hands of other people. But then, I’m also very good at sabotaging myself for various reasons and in various ways, too.

I tend to work myself into no-win situations. Like the yard sale, my self-publishing excursion was pretty much doomed as soon as I got the idea.

When you’re only as good as your reach, I’ve got short arms.

Writing–My First (Self) Published Book!

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Considering anyone can self-publish a book these days, this isn’t exactly something to crow about. But considering the issues I have that I outlined a few Wednesdays ago, I think it’s quite the step forward for me.

I decided to go through Lulu, as several of my friends have used their services with great satisfaction. After getting over the hurdle of signing up (it was a day long battle as I couldn’t get the cookie settings right on my laptop to get the registration to work; it was all solved after a frustrated tempertantrum, switching computers, and feeling like an idiot), I read through all of the instructions, learning how to properly format my document and all of that. My paranoia of getting things right and knowing what I was doing led me to watch the how-to tutorial five or six times just to reassure me.

I downloaded the template I wanted to use (actually, I downloaded two different ones because I wasn’t sure which would work better) and did some copy pasta to put my short story book together. It was actually pretty easy.

Naturally, I couldn’t resist editing everything one more time. All of the stories have been edited several times before, but the last thing I want to do is put out a sloppy product. I imagine, in inviting people to critique my work as I did, I’m going to get slammed over any grammar or spelling mistakes that managed to slip through. But for the most part, I wanted it to look as clean and professional as possible.

I think I’ve achieved that.

Content is another story and one of the big reasons I published this book of short stories. I want feedback from readers on why they think these stories didn’t get published. I’m opening myself up to some harsh criticism and, I’m sure, some down right bashing. But they’ll have to buy the book (or download) to achieve that. And at least I’ll know that someone is reading it.

If you want to be one of the readers, you can purchase Rejected: Nine Stories I Couldn’t Get Published here or check out the Rejected page for more information.

Any kind words of feedback would be appreciated. Any mean words, too. I can take it.

Bring it on.

Writing–Getting Over My Self-Publishing Issues

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve decided that part of my plan with moving on from my current day job and creating my own day job is to self-publish a book of my short stories.

Now let’s be clear on a few points. I do not think I’m going to get rich doing this. I don’t even think I’ll be able to pay my bills doing this. This is by no means going to make me famous (and really, I don’t want to be; I wouldn’t mind my work being famous, but not me) and thereby leading me to money.

However, I do think that I’ll be able to sell enough books (physical and eBook form) to contribute to paying my bills. I think I’ll sell enough books to get my name circulating a little more as a writer. I think it will give me the boost I’ve been looking for.

I also think this will help me accomplish two things when it comes to writing and my writing career.

First of all, this will force me to be reasonably critical of my work. You know how they say that you are your own worst critic? I take that to an extreme. I take that to a paranoid level. Nothing is good enough and with a lot of my submissions, it either gets to a fit of frustration or a deadline that makes me say it’s good enough and send it off. Now that I’m being the editor, I have to look at my stories with a little bit of a kinder, yet no less objective eye.

Secondly, this will give me a chance to be more proactive at marketing myself. My checking account will depend on it and paying my bills has always been a good motivator for me. Promoting has really become a big part of a writers job now and I need to get over whatever hang-ups I have with it (and I have enough to make a seperate post on). Between the book and making and selling my own jewelry, I think I’ll have plenty of opportunity to get better at self-promotion.

And if I can stay focused and objective enough to make my product good enough for promoting, I think I’ll be in business.

Times, They Are A-Changin’

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

The reason why Monday Megalomania is posting so late (if you notice, it usually posts early in the morning) is because I had to put my notice in at my day job first.

Yeah, you read that right. I’m quitting my day job.

There are a lot of contributing factors, the biggest two being I’ve got another opportunity that I think will work out better for me and I’m not cut out for cube life.

The new opportunity is coming from my friend DaLette. I admit that I’ve been looking for an out from the day job for a few months. The steady money is nice, but I resented how little time and energy it left me to write. I initially thought to find a new day job, something part time, possibly in retail. But pickens have not improved since the last time I was looking for a day job. I was feeling stuck and pretty miserable.

However, DaLette was looking into starting her own business and after some research decided she’d keep doing things the way she’d been doing as a freelance landscaper/decorator, wedding officiator, and self-published author. One hell of a mixed bag, right? But it works for her and that’s what she told me. If I wanted to get out, I needed to make my own day job and freelance my strengths.

It took a few weeks for me to understand exactly what she was getting at. My gig is writing and I haven’t been too successful at making money at it. I couldn’t really think of anything else I had a shot at doing that would pay my bills and my bills need to be paid. Remember I made a mess of my finances pursuing this writing dream without a regular income and I’ve yet to really recover.

But the seed was planted in my head and I started looking in my life for things I could do to freelance, so to speak. It took a little time, but it finally hit me. One thing I’ve always loved to do and always been pretty good at doing is making jewelry. Bracelets have always been my specialty, but I’ve done necklaces, too. It occured to me that between friends, relatives, and the Internet, I could make a little money doing it.

With this thought in my head, I decided why should I wait to have someone publish my short stories? Why can’t I just publish my own? If I’m going to be selling my goods, I should sell the goods I really want to be selling, right? Right (I’ll be doing a post about self-publishing on Wednesday).

Now, I’m a very money-minded person (that’s a post for another Monday, too). I have to crunch numbers in order to look at the financial reality of what I’m getting into and I admit, I wasn’t thrilled with what I looked at initially. But after some thought, I figured at the very least it would get me some extra cash.

I started moving forward with these new projects, plotting how to use word of mouth and the Internet to my advantage. I like having a plan. It gives me goals. It gives me something to work toward. It makes me feel like I have some control.

And then DaLette stopped by.

Her freelancing has been going well. So well, in fact, that she needs some help. I offered to be that help before. I can be that help now. I’m going to be that help.

I figure that between my ventures and the work DaLette can offer me, I can keep my head above water in terms of paying the bills and have time to get back to seriously working on writing. It’s going to be tough and it’s going to be work, but it’s going to be work at something I WANT to do and I LIKE to do.

Yeah, that brings me to the second factor. I didn’t really like my job. Maybe about a month into the gig I realized that I didn’t like it, but couldn’t figure out why. There was no reason that I could put my finger on other than I’d rather have been writing. However, I felt that even though I didn’t like it, I could tough it out for a while for the sake of the paycheck. I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t a bad job.

In the past few months, that’s changed. The job has changed. I’m not happy with the change and I’m not happy with some other things that I won’t get into out of respect for the people that still work there. I’ve got some hang-ups with the way some things are done and some things are handled and there’s no reason for me to hang around in that environment and make things worse.

So, I’m getting out. After Labor Day, I will be free.

And back to working 7 days a week for whatever scratch I can make.