Discovering the New World

The New World I want to talk about for a few minutes here is the new world of publishing–which you may or may not be sick of hearing about. I know things get written about it every day, and I’m not going to try to re-hash what you’ve already probably read and what others have probably said much more eloquently than I could. I’m going to talk a little bit about my personal experience with it.

My short story collection, To Unimagined Shores, launched last week in print and ebook from Third Person Press. Now, as you probably know, I am one-third of Third Person Press, so this project is a strange combination of self-publishing and traditional publishing. For some aspects of the book, I sat on the autho’s side of the table: my two partners were my editors and dealt with the stories as editors do (that is, with a steely eye and a red pen in hand). Most of the stories in this collection were previously published in a wide variety of venues (magazines, anthologies, webzines, etc.), so they needed little new editorial attention, but one story was new and previously unpublished, so it had to run the full red-ink gauntlet. We consulted on the table of contents, the stories to be included, and generally how the book would come together.

For other aspects of the book, I sat on the publishing side of the table: I did the layout and typesetting, since this is one of my Third Person Press roles anyway. I created the cover art (and had it vetted by my editors), and I did the conversion to eformats and handled the printing and distribution. My colleagues pretty much took care of the actual launch.

And now I’m doing the marketing. Which, honestly, seems to be more work than all the rest put together.

This new world, I can tell you, is not for the faint of heart. It is not a matter (if you want to do things right, at least), of throwing some words into an ebook formatting program and sticking it up online, then sitting back and waiting for the ebook sales to fly through the roof. If you’re thinking of venturing into this new world of e-publishing, especially if you are going to act, even partially, in the role of publisher, please know what you are getting into, and please do things right. I’m working on an article for next month’s issue about what “doing things right” entails, but for now I have one word for you to think about: professional.

This book is going to represent you, as an author. The cover is going to say things about you. The blurb is going to say things about you. The entire presentation of the book is going to say things about you. And this is before a potential reader has encountered a single word from the inside of the book.

Which, it goes without saying, is going to say a whole lot about you.

So make sure that for the tasks you plan to take on yourself, you can do a professional job with them. And for the rest, get the help you need elsewhere, from friends or colleagues or paid professionals. As they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression, and you want your book to make a good one.

It may be a whole new world, but some things don’t change.

Okay, everyone back to work! See you in the new year!