DEVIKA FERNANDO: guest post on PUBLISHING

On the blog today, we have South Asian author, Devika Fernando, who writes "a little bit of everything" genre-wise...in her own words. This is her experience with self-publishing: 

Here's her WEBSITE where you'll find all of her books and other goodies.

Thanks for requesting a guest post from me, Falguni! I’m honoured to be on your blog.

At the end of 2013 I decided to make my lifelong dream come true and become a romance novelist. I had stumbled across an online article about self-publishing. After reading it, I spent months researching the topic and reading countless modern romance novels and indie books to get a better picture of things. Finally, I sat down and wrote my debut “When I See Your Face” during NaNoWriMo, which I released in April 2014. A year has gone by, and I don’t regret anything.

Everyone always wants to know whether I never considered traditional publishing and whether I might turn to it in the future. The first answer is yes, the second answer is no. In the beginning I was open to trad publishing. But then I realized how many limitations are connected to it – and not least of all, how much time. There are so many brilliant authors who waited years and years before they got published, and there are great self-published novels out there who had been rejected time and time again. The more I found out about the indie author world, the more I was drawn in. Here’s what I like about indie authoring: 

-control, freedom and flexibility (about the plot, editing and marketing)

-       -to be paid a fair amount of money for your hard work

-       -I can have a say about the cover

-       -I hold all the rights

-       -it’s easy to make changes to the books

-       -no time wasted by pitching the story to agents

-       -no risk of being cheated

Of course there aren’t just pros, but also cons. Depending on how you choose to go about it, self-publishing can cost you a hefty sum of money if you hire editors, cover designers and formatters and if you invest in paperbacks to distribute. If you opt against it, you’ll either need to ask friends for help or you’ll end up with a book that doesn’t look professional and thus might not attract any readers. Also, the competition is huge – but that’s the case whichever way of publishing you choose. You might have fewer sales – but you’ll earn more from each sale. Money is indeed an important factor, for there are many authors out there who were lured into publishing deals and have never seen a single cent for their work or have had to wait much too long. If you’re with a publisher, you can rest assured that you’ll have a professional cover and professional editing – but I’ve read dozens of books that had just as many mistakes as self-published ones.

Marketing is viewed as a self-publishing con by some because it takes up much time, because there’s a lot to learn, and because sometimes you have to invest money in it. However, even authors who are with famous publishers dedicate themselves to marketing and should be active on social media – and publishing houses don’t necessarily promote unknown authors.

In the end, it all boils down to what you personally prefer. If you want to focus only on writing, prefer a professional approach and wish to sell as many book as you can, then traditional publishing is the right way. If you want to make your own choices, if you don’t mind investing time and learning new things, and if you want to earn more from your writing, then try out self-publishing. As for me, I am happy to be an indie author. It isn’t always easy, but it’s filled with valuable experiences, I’ve found amazing friends, and I am living my dream of having my books out for everyone to be read.

~~~

That was an excellent post on publishing, Devika. Thanks for coming on and unveiling the self-pub process for our readers.

WHAT AN AWFUL BOOK!

I love reading. I always have, I always will. I've read my share (and possibly shares of eighty seven other individuals) of books in my life. Not all the books I read make me weep with joy at having read them. I understand and have experienced (far too often) that not all books will speak to my soul. But the last two that I read, that I'm reading, have left me completely gobsmacked...in their awfulness. To the extent that I spent two days wondering what the hell was the matter with the writers of said books, the publishers and editors of said books and finally the readers of said books...myself excluded.

I picked the novels up in India. Both are adaptations of the Mahabharata, an epic close to my heart, and the only reason I bought the books in the first place. The authors had nothing more to do than rework an old legend on a new-ish premise with a fresh spin. Sadly, both books failed miserably to do any kind of reworking, remolding or spinning...in my eyes. And I was outraged by their utterly cavalier disregard for good writing.

Notice I said WAS. I am over my outrage. And here's why.

I've realized in my forty-eight hour pout which began with the almost desperate need to grab a pointy, sharp blade from the knife block in the kitchen, flying non-stop to India, hunting down the publishers, editors and authors of said books and hacking them to pieces for destroying this beautiful legend that is the Mahabharata with their rubbish. The murderous urge ended in an anticlimactic, self-induced opening-of-the-eye. 

I have realized since that a successful book need not be good. More astonishingly, a "good" book need not be well-written. And even more astonishingly, my parameters for a successful book, good book and well-written book could be the exact opposite of yours. What I consider good or well-written or successful is but my own opinion of it. Of course, best-seller lists and awards do validate certain books. But here's the thing. Some of those great books on those best-seller lists have not appealed to me in the least! And we all know of a certain atrociously penned trilogy that broke best-selling records not two years past.

So, there goes the theory that a good book should have universal appeal. 

That being said, isn't it the duty of the author, the publishing house and the editor to provide its reader with the best possible product?

I am so confused. What do you think? To each book his own worm?

(Source of gifs: random search on Internet)

E-BOOKS VS PRINT BOOKS

And the debate rages on...

Says One: I love holding a book in my hands. The feel of it. The weight of it. The smell of it. The dog ears and the flippable pages. The option that I can tear out the pages I hate and make paper planes with them. The hours I spend wandering around a library, caressing leather bound spines and embossed letters. The sheer majesty of a floor to ceiling book shelf, it's like my personal stairway to heaven.

Says Two: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stop kidding yourself. Holding ancient papyrus scrolls and cuneiform tablets isn't going to get you any closer to Aristotle, or God, for that matter. And think about the waste, man. The trees desecrated, the jungles destroyed, the eco-system damaged...do you even know how ink is manufactured? Print books are bulky, have become more expensive and soon won't be so easily available with all these bookstores (your portals to nirvana) shutting down helter-skelter. I'm not even going to think about your stupid paper plane fetish.

Says Me: It's the content that matters, y'all, not the book's publishing format. Good prose will remain good prose whether its  carved in stone or gigabytes or ink. 

What say you?

FROM MANUSCRIPT TO BOOK

The World of Publishing.

Publishing a book has never been easy. While I can't comment on the intricacies of printing non-fiction or text books, I know that novel publishing is an excruciating process. 

1. You write a book or have an idea of a book.

2. You sell it to an agent. (JK Rowling took 3 years to sell Harry to an agent.) 

3. Your agent sells it to a publisher. (Rowling's agent took 2 years to sell Harry to Bloomsbury.)

4. The publisher likes it with a caveat (always a caveat).

5. You work with an editor (thats part of the caveat) who'll want to warp-drive perfectly lovely scenes onto another planet.

6. Once you've scratched out the final manuscript, there's several more rounds of editing, then type-setting, more editing, cover design, and more editing.

7. Only after you've become an insomniac with an eyesight problem and severe anaemia (because really where in hell do you find time to eat?) you will finally hold your book in your hands.

Of course, with the advent of digital books and self-publishing portals, this process is getting easier, faster and more in the hands of the author than ever before. But make no mistake, with the exception of 2 and 3, you still pretty much march through the same regime. It is still a difficult PROCESS. And then you're stuck with marketing your slashed-up masterpiece.

For me, the writing of the novel itself is the easiest part of this whole deal, where all I'm relying on is my laptop and my head. 

Me write. You publish. That's how I want this process to work for me. Thus far at least. 

Advice for aspiring writers: decide what kind of an author you want to be. That is, traditionally published or self. You will pay with your sweat and blood in both processes, I promise you. Decide the kind of author you want to be and then stick to your guns. Take up meditation, Yoga, Zumba or go climb Mt. Everest in the hurdle-filled interim between manuscript and launch.

And then, start it all over again. Fun huh?