Okay, so I’ve had a few people ask me to chronicle my adventure into self publishing. For those of you that don’t know, I am self publishing my series Fairelle. A nine book, seven novella series of Fantasy Fairytale Retellings. So every Monday for the next bunch of weeks, I say bunch because it won’t be a few, it’ll be more than a few, but it won’t be forever either, so I’m just sticking with bunch. Anyway, so for the next bunch of Mondays I will be posting about my journey.
It started last year when I was trying to place my first novel Dead Awakenings. I had trouble at first finding a home for it and a friend mention to me that novellas are great for authors early in the careers to try and get their names out. So I then said, “Okay, what would I want to write as novellas?” It took a while but I finally came up with the idea of a series of Fairytale retellings that of course were Paranormal, but also where the characters moved from book to book. I started with Little Red Riding Hood and from there mapped out eight more books:
Red the Were Hunter, Snow the Vampire Slayer, Zelle and the Tower, Cinder the Fae, Belle and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty the Dragon Rider, Rumplestiltskin, The Little Neriadian and Swan Lake.
I knew immediately that I wanted these books to be released at least one every four months. They’re only 55-58k long, so I figured, no big deal. Well…Then I got a couple of cotracts on my other books and realized that it takes publishers 6 months to 18 months to get a book to market. Even a digital first book. At that rate I’d be writing this series for the next eight to sixteen years! Well, anyone who knows me knows I have TERRIBLE, and wonderful Adult ADD. So, that wasn’t going to work for me.
From there I realized I really wanted say over my cover art. Like, REALLY wanted it! I used to be a graphic designer and so good cover art was crazy important to me with this series. Then what I found out was my books didn’t really fit anyone’s expected lengths. Novellas are typically 30-50k and novels are typically 60-75k. Well, mine fell through the cracks. And even though I added to Red and made it 58k, it still wasn’t quite long enough and I felt that if I added to it, I would just be adding to add, and not really doing the story or plot any good. So I decided against it.
Now, let me tell you! For MONTHS I kicked against the pricks! “No!” I told myself. “You will publish this series traditionally!” But for months it seemed no matter what I did, things just didn’t work out.
Now, I should interject here that my husband has been begging me from the beginning of my writing carreer to self publish, but I’ve fought him tooth and nail. Just like I fight him on everything. Why? Well it isn’t because I don’t think he’s a genius. He is. It isn’t that I don’t love him. I do. I just like things to be my idea 🙂 Anyway, finally I decided enough was enough. I was going to self publish them!
So from that decision, I began moving forward and asking every self publisher I knew their secrets and advice. The more I asked the better I felt. The better I felt, the more excited I got! But if you want to hear about some of the things I heard, you’ll have to come back next Monday for more Me, Me, Me Monday 🙂
Thanx for stopping by!
