Another Site...Maybe

25-03-2011

I am giving consideration to two things at the moment, both of which are geared at my writing hobby.

Thing number one is making a second site, one that is purely for the writer in me. It will be a single location with information on the books I've written (that's right, I'm nearly finished the second one) and be generally a much more coherent place to store all things writing related. Like the sort of website you see most authors have on the Interweb these days. They don't use them as blogs about whatever random stranger annoyed them on the dart or crazy computer thing they found interesting, they keep them for all things related to their writing and nothing more.

Why do this? I hear nobody ask. Mainly because the Internet hasn't evolved in such a way yet that I can hear questions shouted at computer screens around the world while people read my meanderings. Well as anyone who has visited The Bauble in the last five years will attest to, it isn't the most logical of sites. Whatever gets posted here can range across a wide area of topics. It is, for all intents and purpose, a proper blog just without real purpose.

But a site dedicated to nothing but my writing activities would make sense from many angles. Firstly it means that I could use it to try and secure a deal for myself, pointing agents and publishers at it. They wouldn't have to try and sift through the deranged ramblings of a mad jester to find the few entries on writing. They simply would go to a different spot and it would all be there for them. Coherent and somewhat relevant.

Secondly, it would be a good thing to have if I ever did manage to get a book out there in the big bad world. Marketing and self promotion are easier to do in this day and age than any that have come before it, so why not use a blog about writing to do just that? Waffle on about the current state of a book, what stage it might be at in becoming a reality. That sort of thing.

The third reason sort of leads into the second thing I am considering these days: self-publishing. Specifically e-book self-publishing.

One of the big paradoxical walls I am hitting with agents these days is this: We only take on authors that have been published already. Leading to the conundrum of how the hell do you get published if an agent won't take you on without being published. After taking a short break from firing off my first novel to the dozens of agents, many of whom don't even send you back a P.F.O letter, I got to thinking about self-publishing.

Obviously it would be great to walk past a bookshop and be able to go "Hey, that's my book on the shelf." but there is a huge cost in that. I'm under no delusion that I'm going to make millions over night, but it would be nice. I'd settle for having some folks buying something I wrote and enjoying it.

So, while pursing some sites that I visit on occasion, I read an interesting article about a writer in the US that has self published nine books over the last five or six years. Pricing them herself, selling them through the various online methods, using the Social Network (not the movie, all that FaceSpace and Twitbook stuff) to promote it. The figures she has earned are nothing short of mind blowing. To the extent that now, after having nine books bought nine hundred thousand times and appearing on the New York Times best seller list, now agents are talking to her.

Which is something I am finding hilarious. Here is a girl that has gone and done it on her own, made a success out of it, is living the dream and using new media to do all the work. Only after she makes two million on her own do agents want to talk with her.

As I said before, I am against owning an e-reader/e-book myself. I like my books in print. But if it is a means to an ends then I may just look into this whole e-book self publishing thing.

Plus, apparently, Amazon have a service set up where they sell your book for you in e-book format but also do a "Print on demand" service.

Then again I may just do nothing from any of the above and continue on as I am. Great ideas float through my head all the time .

What's anyone else think of this? I'd go so far as to stick up a poll of some sort but that would be work so comments in the rant will do just grand.

Blue_jester

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