Some authors have been and always will be traditionally published. Some decided right from the get-go to self-publish. Then there are the hybrids. I’m one of those.

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I wish I still had a traditional publisher. There are a lot of plusses. For one thing, I didn’t have to worry about finding editors or cover artists and formatters. I especially didn’t have to worry about marketing. I did do my share of self-promoting, but the publisher I was with had a woman I dubbed “The Energizer Bunny” of marketing and I appreciated all her efforts. Having a deadline was another plus as it kept me focused and on a timeline. I enjoyed being a part of my publishing house community and I’d still be there, except…..

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My acquiring editor retired…. The head of my publishing house bought my next book, but with Deb gone, my manuscript was farmed out to a contract editor. There were several things I didn’t enjoy about this experience. The first was that she originally worked with a big NY publisher and she had a very VERY narrow view of the way a book needed to be written. I was asked to make changes I didn’t like or agree with, but having contracted my book, I was not given a choice. One of the biggest issues was that I'd carefully woven all the backstory my readers needed into my romance/time travel. My contract editor wanted it all taken out and put into a prologue. For one thing, I’ve known plenty of readers who routinely skip prologues and epilogues. For another it meant creating an action scene that had nothing to do with the story. As it turns out, readers didn’t care for it either. I submitted this book to the Florida Writer’s Literary Awards contest – a contest I’d placed silver in twice. While my time travel managed to move into the finals, all four of the judges panned the prologue and suggested that the book would have been far better had my backstory been woven into the plot. I knew my book and my readers better than the contract editor, it would seem.

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In addition to this, my Energizer Bunny had moved on to a bigger publishing house – and why wouldn’t she? She was talent, energy and a great salesman. But that left a newer, less intuitive and less experienced replacement in charge of marketing my new book. Sadly, it did not do nearly as well as any of my previous books and the head of acquisitions decided not to contract the next book in the series they had already released four books for. I opted to go indie.

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I found a good copy editor and I have a vigorous, candid critique group that was a great replacement for content editing. I was directed to a woman of great talent for creating good covers who not only read my manuscript to understand the story and get a feel for what the cover needed to convey, but she also took into consideration the covers for the previous four and kept the new covers similar in style and content. Now it was time to format and upload my book.

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I hate to admit my age, but I have to confess, I grew up BEFORE computers. Kids that were born into this age of IT have a far easier time than I ever will understanding how things work online. I did my best, but still ran into problems. I was fortunate that a very nice man at Amazon was willing to reformat some of my images to fit their protocols. A fellow author helped me with some of my formatting issues, and after a long and stressful effort, my book was finally out there. I was thinking, at the time, that the next book would be easier. NOT SO! Everyone updated their software in between that first book and the second and the learning curve I thought I’d conquered, was out there again, perhaps even steeper than the first time. But I did get it done and book 6 in the series was released. I’ve since added paying for a professional in the field to format and upload my books to Amazon and Ingram.

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Now the other stressful issue raised its head. I am NOT A SALESMAN. I am an author. I just want to write, not sell books. Every effort, from FB parties to give-aways to posts on all my various social media sites are an everyday slog that I HATE. You might think I’ve gotten better at it, but that hasn’t happened. I still hate it and I am no better at it now than I was five books ago. I just want to write. Not spend time figuring out how to sell what I write.

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If I could go back to being a traditionally published author, I’d do it in a heartbeat. On the plus side, however, once I've paid for the cover art, the copy editing and formatting, I get to keep ALL the proceeds from the sales.

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Either way, it’s a good thing I’m not relying on income from my writing to support myself. In today’s world there are few authors who can say that their book sales do meet this goal. It would be nice to make a best seller list again, but even if I don’t, at least I still enjoy the whole story-telling process of writing a novel. I enjoy the research that goes into each book and I love creating new characters and throwing them to the wolves so I can watch them figure out how to save themselves. And I love being a published author – both traditional and indie.

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Check out some of our other Round Robin Blog Hoppers and see how they get published and what they like or don’t like about the business end of writing.

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Connie Vines 

Bob Rich 

Diane Bator 

Victoria Chatham 

Helena Fairfax