Shifting Tactics: Going ALL IN to the Self-Publishing Road

It wasn't an easy decision. And I've been sitting on the fence for years. I've been watching what is happening within the industry, including on the traditional path, and there were things that made me nervous.

Initially, I had my heart set on certain things, but as time moved on (and my priorities changed), I realized that I was really holding on to certain ideals out of fear. But there were a few things that were just breaking my heart and setting my career plans back further and further, and impacting on my editorial career, too. I just couldn't do it anymore. I had to make a decision to commit properly in one direction or another.

So, I finally made the decision to toss in the towel for the traditional path and go All In for the self-publication road.

As a professional writing coach and developmental editor, I am still highly supportive of those wishing to pursue the traditional publication path. And there are some writers that I have encouraged to take that chance, knowing that "now" is the time for their story in the market. But the decision for publication path needs to be a personal one. And it needs to be a decision that is carefully considered given the truths about all publication options. It needs to be a well-informed decision.

If you are willing to stick around, I'll break it down and hopefully explain why I've made the decision for myself to head down self-publication roads.

Why traditional publication is no longer right for me

When I started my personal writing journey back in 2008, I was determined to head down traditional roads. But back then, self-publishing was seen as a last resort in some circles… as if the only ones who self-published were those who couldn't get traditional contracts.

That is definitely NOT the view today. Writers like Joanna Penn (one who has self-published since the beginning of her writing career and never once considered traditional roads) have proven that self-publication is a viable option if you have the right mindset. And now that James Scott Bell (and Brandon Sanderson) have joined the self-publishing revolution, being your own publisher has now taken on the vibe of indie-films… and indie-films have won the top awards in the film industry.

Even with the welcoming shift to self-publication, for such a long time, I was still determined to head down traditional publication roads.

Then the pandemic hit, and the entire publishing landscape changed. Everything was flipped on its head.

The way we purchase books changed. Marketing strategies changed. And suddenly everyone had the time to write that book that they always wanted to write. And the market became saturated.

Querying was always difficult. But it got worse. Slush piles grew bigger.

Meanwhile, publishing houses were downsizing their editorial staff and changing how they did things too.

Many traditional publishers saw a drop in the market share, making them leery of taking on the risky debut writer. And if that debut writer just happened to write something that was outside the box—something that didn't quite fit perfectly inside the genre—then it was an even harder sell. (Interestingly, the drop in market share seen by the traditional publishers was not being taken by the self-publishing, but rather by small presses. This is according to Jane Friedman, one of the leading experts on all things publishing.)

Advances on publication contracts dropped significantly, with many advances being in the low- to mid-range 4-figures. This, of course, was assuming you got a contract that came with an advance. Many small presses were using the higher royalties model, foregoing advances altogether. And of course, if you did get that advance, you weren't given your advance all at once. You never were. But now, that advance has been spread out until after publication too.

In today's publishing industry, the writer needs to do the heavy lifting when it comes to marketing. This is regardless of the publication path you take. But for those who are traditionally publishing, you need to be careful that your sales records don't drop too low, or your publisher might drop you. (One of the women in my Mastermind group has recently been dropped by their publisher… "Because the books are not selling… but the publisher is not doing any marketing, so of course they're not selling.")

So… You put in all this effort to write a book, polishing it to the nth degree, and you spend many long painful hours to craft a top-notch query letter. Even if you somehow manage to get the attention of an agent, there's zero guarantee that you'll score a publisher, and there's even less of a guarantee that you'll get a decent sum of money for your efforts.

But it gets worse.

The number of scams portraying themselves as publishers has dramatically increased. So, any writer choosing to publish with small presses has a lot of research to do. You still have the slush querying involved, but you also need to ensure that the small press is going to do right by your story (and not take you through the cleaner). (And this is just one of the reasons why I highly recommend the Writer Beware blog to other writers.)

There has been a massive push for diverse books, which has been both good and bad. It's good, in that we are seeing a more diverse pool of authors getting traditionally published, but the push for diversity has also led to a partial push for exclusivity. In some cases, the books being published are substandard and cookie-cutter plots.

This substandard quality of writing was amplified when AI technologies came on the scene, flooding the self-publication market with works that were… Well… I'm not sure substandard is even a description for it.

Traditional publishers quickly moved to rule out any writer using AI in the generation of their stories (mainly because of the copyright nightmare and substandard quality of writing). But traditional publishers started using AI-generative tools themselves for other things.

I have a few writing buddies who are Harlequin writers, contracted to write three or four books a year for Harlequin Romance. And it's in their contracts that AI-generative tools will be used for translations and audiobooks. Now, granted, for some of those writers, without the AI-generation playing a role in this, their works would never see other languages or be in audio, but still… I'm not comfortable with this idea at all.

And none of this speaks about the increase drive to have an active online presence, active newsletter list, and everything else that goes with being a human. Somewhere in all of this mess, we still need to function in society and within our families.

So, between the fierce competition, the push for diversity, the shitty advances, the requirement to do your own marketing, and the role that AI-generation is now playing within publishing, I'm too tired to keep fighting losing battles. Instead, I need to focus my efforts and energies on the activities that are going to get me closer to my ultimate dream—and bring me a little joy in the process.

I'm not whinging about this. Honestly, I'm not. This is just the reality of the industry at the moment. And with everything that has happened in recent years within the industry, I don't have the energy to keep pushing for the traditional path for myself. My passion for that path has waned. But my passion for books and publishing has never been so strong as what it is today.

Why self-publishing is now the road ahead of me

While I've recently decided to abandon the traditional publication path, I also took 11 years to make that decision (and even now, I'm questioning if it's the right decision). Initially, the traditional path mindset forced me to become a better writer, perfecting my craft. And for that, I'll always be proud of the choices I made all those years ago.

But my past efforts to cling to the traditional publication road have stalled my writing and stalled my editorial career.

I have multiple manuscripts that were sitting in the query slush. And all of them were first in series. I wanted to write the sequels, but I kept encountering a block that was holding me back. I didn't know if I would face the situation where I needed to make a change in the first book that would have a ripple effect on the rest of the series. So, as long as those manuscripts were stuck in the query slush, I was stuck in a holding pattern.

I tried to write standalones, but I was still stuck… because I wanted to be writing the sequels to the stories that I was querying.

Because of this holding pattern that I found myself in, the only real writing that was getting done was my nonfiction. But my nonfiction carried a time-sensitive nature to it. I didn't have the two years to wait for the common publication cycle before getting Hidden Traps of the Internet out there. So, right from the inception of that material, I had always said that my nonfiction would be self-published.

But I didn't want to be writing nonfiction. I wanted to be writing fiction.

Every so often, the idea of self-publishing my fiction would cross my mind. But every time it did, I would hit this paralysis state again, unable to move forward. All I could see was the mountain called "Marketing" on the road ahead… and I'd panic. Mainly because my personal reach is still incredibly small, even after over a decade of trying to build that audience. And there were all the things that I would need to hire others for—but I didn't have the finances to do it properly. So, with no money and little energy, I fell into massive holes of depression—making the stagnation even worse.

During 2023, I started watching how much AI-generative tools were being used within publishing—and I was feeling more and more uneasy about the situation.

We'll ignore the copyright nightmare that AI-generation is at the moment. The truth of the matter is that I don't want AI-generation anywhere near my personal creative works. I want human voices for any audiobooks. I want human editors doing my copyediting and proofreading. And I want human graphic designers working on my book covers. If I went traditional (even with a small press), there was no guarantee that I would get any of that.

At the start of this year, as I was putting the final touches on Hidden Traps of the Internet and turning my attention to the next project, I made the decision that changed everything in my head. I had that all important talk with myself and forced myself to hear some hard truths.

"F*** it! Who cares if you have a small audience? You have standards and a work ethic that speak volumes when you put your mind to it. You have never failed at anything when you put your heart and soul into it. So, just do what you want to do and stop sitting on the fence. Jump off and land with your feet in the muddy field and start trudging your path through the mud. It will be a lot of hard work, but nothing has ever been easy for you, because you've never liked taking the easy path. It's the challenge you thrive on, because overcoming the obstacle is what makes it all worthwhile. Now, get off your ass and start publishing those manuscripts! And get to work on writing those sequels!"

Yeah, I can be one mean bugger to myself when I need to be, kicking my own ass from here to next Tuesday. And trust me, there were a lot of tears. There still are a lot of tears. But now my tears come from fear of the unknown, afraid that the muddy path has a sinkhole ahead that I have yet to identify.

But the magic of those kick-ass words to myself: The moment I made the decision to just do it, I was suddenly unstuck. I was happily writing fiction again, looking forward to working on the next story… and the next one. And I was even happily writing the standalone novel that was kicking my ass and giving me no end of headaches. (And that standalone will become the debut fiction novel that I'll publish in 2025.)

The unpublished stigma that was impacting on my editorial career

Within my editorial career, I deliberately chose to work with early-career writers (those who are either just learning their craft, or those who have been writing for a few years but were still working on their first (or second) publications). I deliberately chose to hone my skills in the developmental editing and writing coaching sectors. It's what I enjoy the most.

However, on an often enough basis for it to cut at my soul, I encounter comments that say, "You should never hire a developmental editor who doesn't have a publication of their own." I will write a blog post in rebuttal to this comment in the future, but it still doesn't take away from the sting or the shame associated with the comment.

I've been fighting against this particular stigma since the day I opened for business. And even though I have proven my worth multiple times over, and have managed to build a solid reputation that I know my shit, I still have to fight against the pre-published stigma. At the time this blog post was published, my only piece of fiction that was out in the wild was a short story entitled The Wishing Well (something that I published in hopes of growing my email list for my author persona.)

To combat the naysayer, and to help with the insecurities that threaten to take me into the darkest of depression wells because of it, I have only one card that I can play: Publish! And more specifically, publish my novels.

Sure, I could continue to pursue traditional publication, but it's a two-year publication cycle from the point you sign a publication contract (assuming that something like a pandemic doesn't mess around with paper supplies or marketing efforts… or anything else). And this says nothing about the time to query an agent, or the time it takes for an agent to find a publisher.

Are you starting to understand the issues at hand?

Yeah, it's safe to say that my heart just isn't in this particular fight anymore. I need to take back some of the control.

My path going forward

I'm treating my publishing imprint (Black Wolf Publications) like it was a traditional publisher and making sure that I'm producing a quality product. This means ensuring that the writing is top-notch, that the editing is the best my money can afford, that my covers are uniquely me (and human generated). And the most frightening part to me is that I get a full handle on distribution and marketing. Of course, this means that I have a lot to learn about the finalizing the publication of books, distribution, and marketing. But a lot of this was something that I was going to need to learn, anyway. But now that I'm the one in the driver's seat, I'm able to properly put a plan together, developing a full production schedule for both my fiction and my nonfiction.

I'm able to write those sequels that I've been wanting to write, because I know exactly what elements of the "first in series" need to change and what ripple effects that will have on the rest of the series. (And yes, one of the books that I was querying will have some massive changes ahead, mainly because I've decided to re-set the story, moving it out of the USA and to a location a little closer to home.)

Based on the things I learned during the release of Hidden Traps of the Internet, I need to allow for a long production schedule for fiction, with copyeditors working on the final stage of the book at least 6 months prior to publication, if not more! And editors cost money (at least the good ones do). And I needed to ensure that I have the funds in the bank—something that is still a concern.

So, financing things means that I need to work smarter, not harder. Become strategic. Which means more planning and more learning.

Every time I start to get overwhelmed by what I need to do to make this all work, I recite the little mantra I adopted back in January: One step at a time.

This is not a short game. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme. This is about being truthful with myself and putting what matters to me first. It will take many years before I have all the pieces in place working properly, but if I don't take the little steps needed to get there, I'll never get there.

So, I'm going All In on the self-publishing road, and doing this in such a way that I can be proud of what I've achieved. I'm doing this one step at a time, to my standards and in my way.