I’ve Decided to Independently Publish Two Gun Hart

It’s now official.  I will be independently publishing Two Gun Hart, the story of Al Capone’s long lost brother who was a Prohibition officer in Nebraska.  I was very torn about this, seeing positives in both traditional publishing and independently publishing.  The decision was ultimately decided for me by others.

I had been weighing the benefits of both decisions for a while.  Traditional publishing gets one into traditional bookstores, and provides a lot of publicity.  I was hoping not only to get publicity for this, but to make the connections I could use for independently published books later.  The benefits of independently publishing would include having control over it and making sure it’s done correctly.  Plus, I will not have to wait for several years to get it out there, which could prove important as I want to make sure it’s released while certain members of the family are still with us.

I wanted to at least see my options.  Publishers refuse to look at it without an agent, so I looked around, gathered information, got connections through friends, etc., and sent it out to more than 50 agents.  I waited for each to get back to me.  A few did.  Several told me they would do it if it was about Al rather than Richard.  A couple were more blatant.  They said they don’t want to do a story about an Italian American unless he’s a gangster.  These racist statements really showed me where their interests were.

Finally, I got my last rejection.  I could go after others.  There are agents out there that don’t advertise being interested in this sort of story, but I don’t see the point of trying that.  It’s strange, because every person I show this idea to is blown away by it.  The agents are the only ones who don’t get it.  It’s their loss, but it’s also sort of the public’s loss, as it will be harder for me to promote it on my own.

I have determined to go for pre-sales.  When one does that, every sale that is made over several months counts as sales in a single day.  That makes it more likely to reach a top seller list.  Every interview I go on and every place I speak, I will be telling about this book, encouraging people to go out right away and buy this as an e-book.  As long as everyone who wants it buys at that time, we’ll have a chance, and the regular publishers will simply have to stand back and watch as they see the sales that could have been theirs.  They will complain, as usual, about how e-books are unfairly taking from them, and they long for the “good old days,” but it’s their own damn fault.

Learning Hashtags

I have to admit something.  I hate hashtags.  I find them incredibly annoying.  First, it’s the fact that the person has finished what they’re saying, yet they’re still repeating words from their statement, which I find a bit odd.  Then there’s the motivation behind it.  It’s a blatant call to “look at me!”  I’ve been really enjoying Jimmy Fallon’s parodies of hashtags on Late Night, and I have several times placed up parody hashtags as a way to make fun of them.

However, in the world of promoting your work, and by extension yourself, you have to do it.  I have a wonderful social media person helping me out with Relic Worlds right now named Tricia.  She has been showing me the value of these hashtags.  By posting my images and various activities, she’s shown me how to get attention to my projects.  The most important aspect of these posts has been the hashtags.  The reason is because it connects the post to other people who have used hashtags on their posts.  So when someone clicks on their hashtag, they see my post, and vice versa.

One problem with this is that, with so many people marketing themselves, or just going “look at me!” there are a lot of hashtags that do not relate to what they’re saying.  For instance, you’ll have a picture of a tank and put #scifi, then when you click on it you’ll see someone at the beach with that hashtag; someone who’s just trying to get people to look at her.  It has nothing to do with science fiction.

Posts like this have really devalued the hashtag, and it makes me wonder how much longer this craze will last.  I feel as though it’s a fad, but I also felt that way about Twitter, so what do I know?  For now, I guess I’ll be doing it myself, but I feel quite dirty.

#writing #author #selfpublishing #Jimmyfallon #scifi #beachbum #hashtags #sellout #Ifeelsodirty