WillJ's ExplodingIdeas

Old

Lady

Testing website post.

Come on baby please stop your crying

Cus right now millions of people are dying

And they aren’t crying ‘cus they don’t have the water

Hungry and dying like lambs to the slaughter

Everyday you worry that your fashion ain‘t right

But right across the water they would kill you cus your white

Make the wrong decision about religion and belief

And they’ll honour it by burying you six feet underneath

It…

Since a young age I’ve always been taught to be independent and as I grew up that even became the case. But I’m not here to talk about finding your feet in life, or maybe I am. I’m here to talk about my decision to become an indie writer.

I have been struggling over the problem of traditional versus self publishing for a while. I have looked at numerous groups, blogs, sites and videos. There is a lot of conflicting opinions on the subject and these are changing with time as we look towards a future we can’t see but maybe can predict. Indie can leave you as a stranded amateur while traditional leaves you bound in a contract with the same outcome. Indie gives you freedom while traditional gives you professionalism.

You can read these opinions and many more on the web but there is a strong trend between BIG and SMALL traditional publishers. Small publishers are more likely to exploit and entrap you while those big companies that can put you in the star light offer you as much chance of being successful as the music industry does to any artist. If you want to write a book with the purpose of being successful then it comes down to a gamble.

However I realise that success doesn’t actually matter. I recently watched an interview with Hugh Howey (If you don’t know him he is a humble writer who has been made the poster boy of indie-pub, thanks to his brilliant “Wool” series). In this interview he didn’t try to say his way was the right way, he just put it down to the luck that it was. The most powerful thing he said was that if you aren't happy now as an unpaid, unknown author then you will never be happy. That resonates heavily on me as I only wrote my book to see if I could. After I finished it I fell into the Rowling complex that I was going to be rich and famous or something like it, which is a shame because that wasn’t why I had started it.

Right now I have a job I enjoy and that gives me lots of time to write, an authors dream come true that I wouldn’t want to jeopardise by signing a contract that would turn my hobby into another job. I mean sure, I’d love to make a living as a writer, just as I’d like to win the lottery, and I have the same probability of doing both.

So my decision to self-publish comes down to the fact that right now I am happy. So now I’ve got through that I can be sure that anything I write will now be between me and you, my reader.

Now the downside of self-publishing (or maybe the fun bit) is that you have to do all the leg work. You have to finish your book, produce/commission the cover, create the marketing campaign and get your book out there. But today is the 21st Century and the times they are a changing. So you have to do that bit more to take advantage of the creative options out there that readers have come to expect or soon will.