Thanks for reading!
Any support, even just giving these posts a read, is always appreciated.
Recent Updates:
No major updates. There are some updates to be had on my publishing journey
Project Progress:
Boy howdy is that a complicated question today.
So, as I hinted I might do in the previous post, I have put my literary fiction long-form project on hold in order to make some progress on my big Sci-Fantasy project. That will probably stay that way for a while, if not until the end of the year. That’s all I’ll say here, because this whole thing is the topic of today’s post.
Recent Fascinations: The Great Things Ahead Along the Long Hard Road
In my July/August edition, I mentioned that I had been courting the idea of self-publishing after some pretty insane, though not uncommon, struggles in the query trenches and discovering/being guided to some cost-saving open-source software. Well, I guess this can be considered the official statement that I WILL be self-publishing my long-discussed sci-fantasy project in 2025.
I started this project back in 2021, and now it is pretty much exactly a year from when people besides my close writer friends will get to read it. I’m excited, but more than just a little terrified of this. The idea of my book, one that I’ve put so much of myself into, being in strangers hands feels terrifying.
Those previously mentioned open source programs have made an enormous difference, with GIMP helping me make real progress on getting cover ideas settled, and currently I’m going through and doing all final formatting of my novel with Scribus, which has honestly been a blast. That is probably what’s been most interesting to me as I’ve started down this path: I’m discovering I really love all the different aspects of self-publishing. I’ve even gone through and written up some loglines/pitches in preparation of the announcement/title reveal (which I’m hoping to do in October), and I’ve found that enjoyable too. All of that is basically saying that I am finding self-publishing, in this early, fledgling hour, genuinely fun and exciting.
The irony of this whole thing is not lost on me, believe me. I know that if any one of you were to decide to go back through the backlog of my 2024 blog posts, and maybe even a few of those from ‘23, you’d find some very similar posts where I am talking about how fun and exciting querying is. As I sit here typing all of this out, that hesitation of the veneer of excitement is very, very tangible, I promise you. But, I feel like there’s a pretty big core difference between what made querying feel fun and what is making this self-pub process feel fun.
Control.
While parts of querying were certainly fun, what finally drove me away was the near total lack of control I had over the process. You query, but you get to know nothing about the status, decisions, or general mechanisms that happen behind the scenes. With self-publishing, I have total control over every aspect of this process right up until the point that I finally release the damn thing. Of course, I’m not so delusional to think that I can brute-force myself into a Travis Baldree-style super success with incredible sales that launch an international career. I don’t know how my sales will go once I launch, I don’t know if I’ll ever make a single dollar off of it.
I can tell you, though, that I will know EVERYTHING that is happening, because I’ll be in charge of it, and for someone as neurotic as me, that sounds just fine. So I’m going to tackle this self-published with everything I have, and I’ll be sure to keep y’all updated.
Thanks for Reading.
