Or: Self-inflicted Pain
I chose indie publishing for its flexibility and creative control. It might look breezy and easy, but it’s a demanding job, on top of the demanding job of actually writing and whatever else it is we do—like, a have a demanding job and/or kids.
If you’re wondering which publishing path to take, know that trad and indie each has its particular pain, and either way, the heartless, grinding industry gears could spit out your book unloved at any moment. Yes, your baby that may have taken you years to gestate, ignored!
Just kill me right now.
Or, learn from the pain.
One study, Pain: Behavioural expression and response in an evolutionary framework, says: “Pain is motivating, and pain-related behaviours promote recovery by immediate active or passive defence; subsequent protection of wounds; suppression of competing responses; energy conservation; vigilance to threat; and learned avoidance of associated cues.”
Oy.
The study also notes, “When these persist beyond healing, as in chronic pain, they are disabling.” So don’t become a masochist.
The reality is, the euphoric cachét of trad publishing that carried authors in the past is fading (if trad is your aim, be prepared to market your book, starting yesterday), while self-publishing is growing in feasibility, credibility, and reward.
Indie no longer means the author couldn’t make it in the real world.
The evidence? More and more successful trad authors are jumping onto the indie train and doing very well.
Then again, those authors have established readership and gazillions of reviews, as well as pockets deep enough to pay for teams that don’t make mistakes. Unlike the small potatoes like me (with small potato pockets.)
Are you a little potato? Then there will be pain.
Enough about pain, you say. Okay. To help you avoid the p**n of indie publishing, I’ve written posts about the land mines I stumbled into.
(My mixed metaphors now make me an exploding potato. But I’m a brave potato! Or something.)
Yes, the demanding job of crafting words, wrestling with feedback, rewriting endless drafts, publishing, then marketing, requires pluck. And the willingness to learn from you-know-what. There’s no other way to get that thick, gnarly, beautiful skin that the industry’s grinding gears can’t destroy.
And inside your hard-earned hide, your babies will safely grow until they’re ready to inhale their first breathes outside and SQUAWK for attention.
(Now I’m a potato exploding with squawking babies in a minefield. And pockets. A potato with pockets.)
Goodnight.