Self-publishing

I’ve e-published six YA novels myself so far. I’ve purchased a few printed self-published books and downloaded several e-books. And my thoughts as I read most of the self-published books ran mostly to ‘hasn’t this writer ever heard of editing?’

At the bottom end, many e-books are simply gawdawful (and I’m not talking about 2,000-word wonders uploaded by seventh-graders; I’m talking about novels that never should have been placed where the public can see them!). At the other extreme you can find well-written novels, including those that have been brought back into print by their authors.

I hope that the e-book industry would soon find some kind of filter, other than low or no sales for crap. My guess is that everyone who thinks he’s an author has been glutting Smashwords, Amazon, et al, with “stuff” that no one would otherwise pick up, so that the effective agent filtering-out process of junk has been bypassed. Sooner or later, however, those who cannot spell or punctuate will grow tired of uploading and seeing few, if any downloads after readers reject their offerings, and those of us who do have a command of the English language will be able to “rise above” the current flow of trash so that readers will not have to wade through the glut to make reading choices.

I’ve actually experienced fair sales of my six novels (well, five out of six – the new High School Series novel was placed on Smashwords and Amazon 1-1-12). My current market strategy is to offer the first title in the series for free and charge minimally for the others. I can’t say that the technique is a raging success, but I can say that downloads of the titles are steady, if slow.

Paul Swearingen

Now retired after 34 years of teaching English, Spanish, and journalism in public, private, and government schools. Hobbies: DX'ing (Google it!), gardening, collecting a lot of crap that now fills my house (I bet I have older computers than anyone who has better sense!).