Today, I have a guest blogger. As you’ll read, I’ve known Jim Winter since way back in the days before some big online retailer decided to go into publishing when it was much harder to self-publish and distribute your books. Jim has been kind enough to provide a guest post for this here blog. Frankly, he’s doing me and my long-suffering husband, not to mention the entire Internetworld universe a favor by doing so. Anyhow, I’ve read his work and highly recommend it. So, without further ado, here’s Jim!
Guest post by Jim Winter
Debbi and I have a past.
Oh, it’s not sordid. Or is it? However, it’s one of those things neither of us speaks of anymore.
In the mid-2000’s, the technology had made it possible for a lot of people to become publishers. As I prepared to send out my first novel, I found myself pelted with ads from iUniverse, XLibris, and PublishAmerica. But I also found a lot of talk about small presses. Back then, self-publishing was bad. Self-publishing meant that you paid to play, violating the first rule of writing:
Money flows TO the writer.
So I signed on with a small press around the same time they signed Debbi. In the beginning, all was well. I made a lot of connections, sold a lot more books than I expected.
Spent a lot of money on travel. The idea was to push the books I’d contracted for up and over a certain magic number so I could go to publishers in New York and say, “I can sell books for you.”
Oh, yes, I was in over my head.
I won’t get into the blame game of who did what or why. There was enough of that back then. We’ve all moved on since then, and apparently, most of us are doing better, even if some of us aren’t writing anymore. Suffice it to say, I learned to make sure a publisher had the means to pay before giving them my work. But that was then. This is now.
I dipped a toe in the self-publishing waters in 2011 after witnessing what Debbi did with it. I haven’t been as successful at it as Debbi, but Debbi, as a full-time writer, is able to devote more time to promotion (and subsequently, writing) than I am.
But I think it’s great that Debbi salvaged her novel from the scrap heap of our former publisher’s implosion. Even better, she used it to restart her writing career. Me?
I’m still playing around with this. I’ve used it to release two novels, one previously published, one six weeks from release when it was orphaned. I’m still learning to do my own covers and my own formatting. It’s getting better. I cringe when I look at “A Walk in the Rain,” my first published short story that was an ebook for a while. The cover photo was a clever bit of Photoshoppery on my part, taken from two different sides of the building where I work. But the layout and the internal formatting are horrible.
I learned, from a very blunt reviewer, that readers don’t want to see an unknown’s prattling about the writing of the book before they can read the book. That will likely get fixed soon in a cleaned up version of Road Rules.
And I learned that annoying people several times a day with self-promoting tweets doesn’t sell a lot of books.
Beyond that? Hey, like someone else said, when you self-pub electronically, the books have forever to catch on. The only person I have to really impress is my publisher.
Who is me.
He’s kind of an ass, but at least he lets me do what I want to do.
Jim Winter was born near Cleveland in 1966. In 1991, he moved to Cincinnati marry the love of his life. He finally met her in 2008 and married her before she could change her mind. Jim is the author of Road Rules, Northcoast Shakedown, Second Hand Goods, and The Compleat Kepler. He has previously reviewed for Crimespree, January Magazine, and Mystery Scene. He lives in Cincinnati with his wife, Nita, and stepson, AJ. Visit him at http://www.jamesrwinter.net
Jim has been kind enough to provide a guest post for this here blog. Frankly, he’s doing me and my long-suffering husband, not to mention the entire 
