It’s always a good idea to learn from mistakes. Often, it keeps you from repeating bad and possibly costly decisions. The mistakes don’t even have to be yours! This is great, because it means that you don’t have to go through the embarrassment and possible cost of a mistake.
The self-publishing community is still comparatively small, or at least the part that wants to make a living from their writing is. That means there are a lot of mistakes to be made and not too many people to make them. Therefore, wasting time making the same mistakes as everyone else means that there is less time to make new mistakes.
Stay with me. I promise to get to the point.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is that those in the self-publishing community are friendly. There are some playful rivalries, but at the end of the day, no one wants to see anyone fail at a dream. So, self-published writers are very open about mistakes, very willing to share the nitty gritty of their story. Because when you share a mistake, it becomes a lesson, something that can help other writers to grow.
Let’s be honest here. Writing is hard. I’ve now published two books and made approximately thirty dollars (rounded up because I don’t know the number off the top of my head). It gets easier when we can help each other and learn from our mistakes and share those mistakes so other people can learn.
On that note, I have a mistake I’ve made and regretted. Some of you might know what I’m talking about, but I’ll tell the story for those of you who don’t.
Last year (2020) I published a book through a publishing company called Friesenpress. At the time, I was super happy with the services they provided, mostly because they did a lot of the formatting and things like that, which I wasn’t really confident with.
Over the last year, I’ve become more and more angry with Friesenpress, for several reasons. First of all, I cannot have any copies of my own book. I requested both a print copy and an ebook, but was told that I would have to purchase those.
In order for the discount that I get from them as an author to be worth it, I have to buy and store at least 100 books. The whole reason I went with a print on demand service was to avoid this problem.
Another issue is pricing. I cannot change the price of my book, as if I do, there is a fee. Any changes I make have a few attached, and if I want the formatted copy (for printing reasons, if I were to go to another company) there is a charge for that. There is even a charge to get them to take down my book, so I can switch to a different company. It was an all around disappointing experience.
Speaking of my book, if anyone reading would like a copy of Unidentified, send me an email (scribbler.collective@gmail.com) and I will send a free ebook for you. This is my way of protesting against the disparity between what Friesenpress promised and what was delivered.
Also, our new book, Screenshot, is available on Apple Books, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble, as well as several other booksellers. It’s on sale until July 4th, with a chance of that being extended indefinitely.
No comments:
Post a Comment