Going it Alone or Call me “Indie”

So I’ve given it a great deal of thought, and I’m finally ready to say for certain that I am going to self-publish.

Almost every indie writer has a blog post where they justify their decision to skip the traditional publishing model. I suppose this my post. But instead of belaboring the point, I’ll sum it up in two words, three syllables; Control Freak.

After all the work to write a book, if someone were to decide the title or cover design of my book for me, I think I might explode. To me, a book is artistry. Not just the words, but the design, the cover, the layout, even the font used. These things are elements of a book’s creation and I want my hand in all of it.

There’s other reasons as well, many that merit little mention. But the overall deciding factor here is that I want to call the shots. If this series succeeds or fails, I want it to rest firmly on my shoulders.

Yeah, I was the kid in school who hated group projects too.

Simply put, I believe in this series. I think it can do well. I want to be there for every step to see that it does.

So where do I go from here?

My first step was to create my own imprint. I wanted to publish my works under a publisher name. I suppose that’s vain, but to me it was just one more step in the creative process. Not only am I creating an identity as an author, now I get to forge an identity as a publisher.

To that end, I present to you Red Bucket Publishing. No logo yet, no live website yet, just a registered domain and a Paypal account. More will come, just as I will officially announce the name of my series and book one specifically in the next few days (remember, The Veil was just the working title).

I’m looking into Print-On-Demand companies to do physical copies, and I want to learn how to format ebooks myself (told you I wanted to be in on every level of creation).

As I go along in this process, I’ll post the things I learn. My writing journey is growing from just writing the books to also include publishing the books. I can’t explain how much that excites me.

So wish me luck. If you have any wisdom to impart, please do so. This is going to be a huge learning experience for me and I’ll need all the advice I can get.

3 thoughts on “Going it Alone or Call me “Indie””

  1. I look forward to reading about your experience. I should probably go back and blog about my first time around, remember all those steps it took and all those lessons I learned.

    I think it’s better to “go it alone” in community, even in an online community. Sounds like fun!

    1. Thanks Annie. It’s exciting and scary all at the same time. But yes, having a community of writers available via Twitter, Facebook & others makes it far easier. Funny things is, when I embraced this decision, I became far more excited and my writing seemed like something real and viable as opposed to some secret on my hard drive.

      I’d love to hear about your experiences. Everyone’s stories about their publishing, whether traditional or self, teaches some lesson.

  2. Pingback: » Becoming a Publisher Justus R Stone

Comments are closed.