Why I choose E.Publishing.

Many writers have faced the same dilemma as me, having written the book or having a great book idea in the making the next thought is how do I get it out there and which avenue should I choose? Before the magic world of on-line publishing choice was much more limited, it was down to two avenues. Traditional Publishers or Self-Publishers, then along came number three E.publishing.

This avenue has allowed writers to upload their books to numerous sites, the only costs incurred, the writers time and maybe costs for a book cover and formatting, even that will be a lot less than some Self-Publishing packages that can run into thousands and are only for writers who have the cash to spare. The pro and cons to e.book publishing are easy to access from thousands of web and blog posts all offering advice and personal experiences, so no-one need ever be in the dark, although you have to be wary of some opinions.

So, why did i chose e.publishing?

Because I wanted the freedom to choose how to publish and set my own rules, just as many entertainment artists are posting their videos on you.tube and doing their own thing without record company involvement. I can fix the price of my book and set it up and down or offer it for free, i can upload short stories, novella's and novels as many as I please 24/7. No-one is telling me what to do!

 I think the issue for me goes back to when I worked as a columnist/journalist for a major newspaper. For 5 years I was on deadlines and direction, luckily most of my work was accepted but every now and again I hit the Editor brick wall, resulting in my story/article being chopped and changed, or worse still shortened at the last minute to make space for the latest blurb, leaving me frazzled as the essence of my work was lost in the editing.

There is a downside to going it alone and here are mine, shared honestly with all new aspiring authors:

A hard slog sometimes no team of publishers behind me pointing me in the right direction for book cover design and marketing.

I am the lone wolf in the department of putting the package all together so it really is 'self' publishing.

Finding someone to design my cover was not too much of a slog, I got lucky with the first person I found on-line and she did a wonderful cover that suited my story perfectly. Formatting, again easy to find as I was not prepared to take the risk to do it myself.

The easy part now over, the biggest hurdle was yet to come. Getting my name and my book out there in cyber space.

Living on Facebook, my blog, twitter, Book Bloggers, Shelfari, and any other form of promotion I could think of while self-editing my second novel taking twice as long as I attended to the net-working.

Watching Amazon's rankings to see my book going up and down like a yo yo, I am not so self-obsessed with rankings anymore, preferring to write more books instead.

Not being nervous about reviews, this can take you down to a whole new stress level, I decided against the stress and so far have 2 great 5 star reviews in less than a month. Even if I had a 1 star review no sleep would be lost over it.

A word of advice.....

Don't pay too much attention to bloggers who all have a handle on how to sell a million e.books in 5 days, or why you should not go with Amazon's KDP select program, or why you should and why you should/should not promote your book for free days, and so on and so on, if you're not careful it will drive you crazy and increase any uncertainty you may have regarding promotion. I prefer to go on what feels right for me and although it's good to get advice from more experienced Authors who have good e.publishing sales it's sometimes best to go with your own instincts and don't take on board everything you read as gospel. We are still in uncharted territory as far as E.publishing is concerned, it's relatively new and like anything new we have to learn along the way, making mistakes as we go along and hopefully learning from them. The greatest thing that has come out of our freedom to publish is that we can experiment which ever way we choose to, including uploading the book we always dreamed of seeing in print. Priceless!