10 Things I Wish I Knew About Being an Author Before I
Published
By Christie Rich
I’m excited to be here today to talk about my experiences in publishing. Writing is amazing. It has the ability to set my mind spinning with ideas and allows me to dream like when I was a child without people questioning my attention span or sanity. The problem is, it’s not all rainbows. There’s a difference between being a writer and an author.
Semantics, some of you are no doubt shouting right now, but hang on there. I’ll explain.
Being a writer means focusing on the writing. Being an author means focusing on what you have written. See the difference?
Now that I have travelled a few miles down the publishing path, I have realized there are some things I wish I’d known before I embarked into Author territory. I’d like to share those with you now:
Being an author takes time away from being a writer: The minute I placed my first book, Five
(Elemental Enmity) up for sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, I became an
author. No longer was my writing just
about completing a book. It also became
about promoting the book I’d written.
Some might find they love being an author more than a writer, but for
me, the most joy comes from discovering that new world or learning more about
my protagonist. It isn’t necessarily as
great to promote, especially when I didn’t know the first thing about doing it.
*grins*
Writing is a business: So it
turns out there is a lot to think about when you are a writer. Not only do you have to worry about
promoting, you have to worry about accounting.
I don’t know about you, but I happen to hate keeping track of
numbers. This is one time in my life
when I wish I was feeling the love. For
me, not so much. You see, if you want to
know how you are doing as an author, you have to either hire someone to keep
track of sales for you, or figure out how to keep track yourself. Just because I know how to use excel doesn’t
mean I want to *grins*.
Covers count: Being a new writer,
especially of the independent variety means there is a lot to think about and a
lot you have to know. I’m not sure how
publishing houses decide on cover design, but for Indies, there is a plethora
of choices. Do we try it ourselves? Anyone with PowerPoint or image editing
software can come up with a cover, but will it be the best for our book? I actually like this part of being an
author. I paint on the side, so design
is second nature to me. Unfortunately, I
haven’t learned how to use Photoshop well enough to pull off the kind of covers
I want. My first cover for Five was very
simple and not as appealing to readers as I had hoped. When I found the Fivefold Symbol that is on
my current covers, I was floored. It
represented the themes in my books, but incorporating it into my artwork has
sometimes been a challenge. Good thing
for me I found an awesome cover artist that sees my vision. So even though I love messing around with
Photo Shop, I don’t have the expertise I need to produce the product I want
which leads me to...
You have to be willing and able to spend money for your books: I’m okay with investing the money I need to
in order to make sure I’m producing a quality product. The trouble is sometimes you pay for things
that might not really help you. For
example, I hired a “developmental editor” on my first version of Five and spent
$3,000.00 to have the editor question every single thing I did within the
manuscript. I had no idea that there was
a difference between a developmental editor and a copy editor which was what I
needed. Author beware is the phrase of
the day where I am concerned. The key is
to check into every aspect of publishing before you agree to shell out any
money. There are several options for
writers and a lot of them are affordable.
Get ready to talk about your books:
Some might think this is a given when you publish a book, yet how to go
about talking up your new book is not that easy for some of us. You might be surprised how hard it is to
narrow an entire book down to a sentence, which is usually what people expect
when they say, “So what’s your book about?”
Look for likeminded people to befriend:
One of the best things I ever did as a writer was to join
goodreads. Not only have I found a great
platform to talk about my books (not as much as you might think), I have found
a community of likeminded people who can give me advice about what books to
read and help me know my market better.
Social media takes time: As much
as I like to chat it up with people online, it can take over my writing time if
I’m not careful. I’m still trying to
figure this out, but there are several options available to busy people to help
us manage social networking. I’ve met some
amazing people online. I even have a
good friend in South Africa because of the internet. This is an exciting time to live in the
world, but with so much demanding our time, we have to be careful to not only
focus too much on promotion. When we
finally find our audience, we need to have something to offer them, and that
just won’t happen if we don’t spend time writing.
Opinions are just that: I didn’t
know going into publishing that there was such a wide variety of opinions on
how to format, edit, promote...well, you name it, someone has an opinion about
it. It’s actually up to the author to
decide what will work best for their book.
You can and should get advice, but just because someone says something
doesn’t make it true for you. Research
is key, and taking the time to make sure you have everything set the way you
want it before you publish will make your life much easier.
There is no perfect book: No
matter how many eyes have scanned a manuscript there will be errors. I see errors all the time when I’m reading
traditionally published books, but most people don’t mention them in reviews or
whatnot. Taking the Independent path
isn’t for everyone, but if that is the course you choose, be prepared to have
people question every aspect of what you have done, from editing to your cover.
Don’t take reviews personally: It’s hard when someone doesn’t like your
book, but it’s going to happen. Every
bestseller out there has one star reviews and many of them have thousands of
one star reviews. As a writer, I can’t
control how someone reacts to my books, but I can control how I react to
reviews. The truth is I have learned not
to react, and I think that is the key to a long writing career. As in anything, we can’t please
everyone. Not every reader will connect
with your story. That doesn’t mean it is
bad. It just means you have had
different life experiences than your reader.
They don’t understand where your protagonist is coming from and that’s
okay. I don’t love every book I read, so
how can I expect every reader to love mine?
So there you
have it. Are you contemplating writing a
novel? Have you a manuscript your dying
to release into the world? Great! Congratulations. That’s quite an accomplishment. But before you send out those query letters
or hit publish on KDP, make sure you’re ready for the ride of your life. Being a writer is great, and being an author
can be just as great as long as you are prepared. Have you had a similar experience? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
