LtUE: Day 3 + Final Thoughts

I hope that you have enjoyed my recap of LtUE thus far. Today I'm going to wrap up the final day and my overall impressions of the conference.

I only went to one panel on Saturday and it was on the Pros and Cons of Self-publishing. My thoughts and views on self-publishing have come a long way in the last year thanks to last February's LtUE. You can read about just how big of a 180 I made in this post. Basically, self-publishing can be pretty awesome. There are definite drawbacks, but some pretty sweet payoffs as well. For me, the amount of control over every aspect of the book and the marketing that self-publishing affords is exciting. I also like how flexible it is. I set my own deadlines. But that also means that I need to be way more intrinsically motivated. No one will come breathing down my neck if I don't write.

So, if you haven't figured it out, I had a blast at Life, the Universe and Everything. I will definitely go again next year if we are still in the area. Last year, I kind of felt like a deer in the headlights and absorbing everything that I had learned was a bit overwhelming, albeit inspiring. This year I feel inspired in a different--hit the ground running--sort of way.

 I will have my first novel roughly outlined by the end of this week with hopes of starting to write by next week. Is just nice to feel like I can accomplish something. I know its a long, uphill process, but I think I can do it! And I will keep updating here with my progress, so make sure to check back soon.

A Bit on Self-Publishing

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to attend an awesome writing symposium. I wasn't sure what to expect as it was my first venture into any sort of writing conference. As stated in the last few posts, I had a great time and I learned a ton. I think the thing that stuck in my ribs the most was the information on self-publishing. For me, self-publishing went from being something to be snubbed and looked down upon to something to be enthusiastically excited about possibly trying.

I wholeheartedly and sincerely apologize and repent of my former feelings.

Now, I am not saying that I will definitely go the self-publishing route in the future. There are pros and cons to both sides of the coin. I just thought that I would outline a few of the things that I learned about why self-publishing isn't just for those who can't get published the traditional route. 

First off, I was amazed at the ease of self-publishing. Now by ease I do not mean one click of a button and you will be a bestseller. But there are so many options and you really can get your work out there quickly. If you want a good product, you obviously would want to spend some time making sure your product looks good, but there are plenty of ways to get your product out there.

 And you don't have to pay a dime out of pocket! I always thought that self-publishing entailed forking out a bunch of money to get your books printed and then storing them in your garage until you could get someone to buy a copy. I'm sure that there are those who still go this route, but there are other options!

For starters, you can do a Kindle version of your book through amazon.com. There is also CreateSpace, amazon's partner company. They do have some paid-for services, like formatting your book, or designing a cover, which can be helpful. But if you are savvy and can do these things yourself, it costs $0 to get your book out there. They are a print on demand site, so when someone orders your book on amazon, they print it and ship it. They then take a cut (and that is how they get paid) but then your get your percentage of the cut--and it is nothing to sniff at.

This leads me to one of the other perks of self-publishing. If you go the traditional route, after the publisher and your agent get their cut, you'll probably get around a 7-9% royalty. So on a $10 book, that's about 80 cents. Not too bad if you can sell lots of books. With the Kindle books, you can make as much as a 70% royalty (if the book falls within a certain price range). So on a $5 dollar kindle book, you would make $3.50. That's pretty great! The royalty is not as large on CreateSpace, but it can still be pretty good (it depends on the length of the book)--a 300 page book set at $10 would give you $1.55 in royalties. That is almost double the traditional publisher.

So there are definite pros to self-publishing, but there can be a few drawbacks. For one, if you self-publish, you have to do all the marketing of your book by yourself. This can take a big chunk of your time. At the writing symposium that I attended, traditionally published authors said that they spend about 15-20% of their time working on marketing. Those who were self-published said they spent around 50-60%. That's huge. So if marketing isn't your thing, self-publishing may not be the way to go. I did learn, however, that even when a publisher wants to publish your book, they expect you to have your own marketing plan of how to get your book out there. So you wouldn't completely escape marketing either way.

Personally, I like the control that self-publishing offers. I also like the indie culture. Although in many ways more difficult, the idea of pushing through the crowd to be successful has appeal. 

Crowd funding has also caught on as a way to get your writing (and other cool projects) out there. If you haven't had a chance to check out Kickstarter, I highly recommend it. Basically, you have a creative idea, and others help fund the endeavor and are rewarded with things that you will give them for helping you out. For example, one of the people I met at the symposium is trying to make a monster look-and-find book. He has various rewards for those who help fund his project, like copies of the book and original art work. Kickstarter has a whole section just for publishing. Its a great tool to potentially utilize. 

So yeah, those are a few of the things that I learned. I was amazed to find out that there are authors that make a living--pay a mortgage and raise a family--just by being a writer and self-publishing. How awesome is that. 

There were a few authors in particular at the writing symposium that helped expand my views on self-publishing. You can find links to their websites below. You should definitely check out their work.

Michaelbrent Collings

Tracy Hickman --yeah, THE Tracy Hickman, co-author of the Dragonlance series

Jess Smart Smiley

Aaron Patterson

LtUE Symposium: In Review (part 2)

Hello again! This post will be the second part of my review of the Life, the Universe & Everything Symposium. The first part of the review can be found here. So as I stated in the previous post, this part of the review will focus on some of the stuff that I learned at the symposium--and boy, was there a lot!

It was the first writing symposium/conference that I have ever been to. I am grateful that I remembered to bring my writing notebook and pen because there is no way that I would have remembered all of the wonderful things from the conference otherwise. There was just so much information! All in all, I went to 12 lectures. I will try to summarize some of the things that I learned below.

I actually had a HUGE paradigm shift during the conference about the world of publishing. I will admit that before the conference, I sort of rolled my eyes and looked down my nose at self-publishing. Someone who self-publishes clearly was inferior to those who were published through a traditional publishing house. In my mind, the self-publisher was someone who had written a mediocre book and then had a bunch of copies printed which are now collecting dust in their garage. To learn otherwise was a complete revelation! I have since repented for my narrow-minded snootiness.

A few of the panels discussed self-publishing and then a few other panels just happened to have some self-published authors presenting. I learned a lot of tips on how self-publishing can be very successful. Now, I am not saying that those mediocre-sit-in-the-garage-and-collect-dust book publishers aren't out there. I am sure there are quite a few. But there are also a lot of successful authors who make enough money to support a home and family. Pretty amazing! I'm not saying that I will definitely go the rout of self-publishing, but it has opened my mind to the idea. I plan on writing a post in the near future specifically discussing more about this topic. Watch for it!

I also attended a few panels about writing good horror. They focused a lot on writing effective horror without being gratuitous or gory and disgusting without a purpose. They also commented on how the horror genre can be very cathartic and actually be the most redeeming genre because there is such contrast between good and evil. I liked that idea a lot.

Another valuable panel I attended was one that talked about making time for creativity with Sandra Taylor. This woman seems like Super Woman with all she is able to fit into her life. But she gave us 10 steps that made it seem possible to fit in some writing time:

1. Identify your support group
2. Have a physical space for your creative endeavor
3. Understand your bio rhythms (when during the day is best for you to write)
4. When setting up a schedule, build supports into it (ie what will trigger me to know its time to write)
5. Master the small stretch--willpower is a limited resource--don't try to bite off more than you can chew
6. Learn to work in fragments--especially true if you have young children
7. Ponder the tortoise and the hare
8. Health and spoon theory (at the beginning of the day, we're only given a certain amount of spoons [energy]--some people get 20, while others only get 2 [maybe because of health issues]--work with what  you have)
9. Get outside your box
10. Your system will break--its not because the system sucks, but because life changes so we have to adjust our system

Number 5 is the most important for me right now. I like to tell myself crazy things: "OK self, on Monday, we're getting up at 5:30am, writing for an hour, then exercising for 45 minutes, showering and eating breakfast all before 8am!" Yeah, today I rolled out of bed at 9am when my daughter woke up. How likely will it be for me to magically start getting up at 5:30am, let alone get the other stuff done? HA! Learning to implement small changes until you have your creative system tweaked is valuable info.

Alright, well, this post ended up being longer than I had expected. I could keep going on all the great stuff I learned, but these were the most impactful things. Keep on the lookout for a post about self-publishing in the near future!