Today’s article is not my thing. The person in charge this time is JesúsCarnerero, a freelance writer & self-publishing, but one of those who are totally self-sufficient; like Juan Palomo. I met Jesus thanks to this blog and he is one of those people with whom you connect directly. Jesus has a lot to tell and has a wonderful way of doing it.
This article is a little longer than usual and much more personal than what you are used to, however, I think it is totally worth it. Jesus knows a lot about self-publishing and today he decided to share his story with us, so let’s go.
I leave you with Jesus.
Contents
The Loneliness of Self-Publishing
Self-publishing a book is being and feeling alone.
Imitating a maxim attributed to Tarantino, I like to start anything I write with a direct sentence and to the chin, a good slap that stuns as well as hook. Hence the statement of the principle.
Self-publishing is a solitary task that branches out into a thousand subtasks —The thing is not to write a story, correct it until you know it by heart, and then throw it into the Amazon ocean of oceans for thousands of potential readers to throw the rod at it. Hopefully— the majority of which you’re also going to eat by yourself.
Also pleasant things often take time to happen. Or they pass halfway. Or they put them directly to your lips and later deprive you of them in a bad way.
When you are a writer who self-publishes his work, the bittersweet flavor predominates.
Lights and Shadows in Self-Publishing
An even more limited summary is contained in an anecdote.
They told me that there was a boy who wanted to meet me because he had read all my novels and was excited about the idea of ​​chatting with the person behind some books that he seemed to have loved. Although I do not write for children, imagine what it meant to me to be in the middle of a similar scene: not only is it the most beautiful thing that has happened to me since I started publishing, but it is one of those memories that I hope that the course of the years do not deteriorate me.
Although that boy and I never got to know each other.
It was supposed that between his family and myself we would organize a meeting, but no, there was not, and I do not know the reasons why it did not happen. I haven’t even heard from them since.
Despite everything, I can’t feel sad. That has been taught to me by the world of independent literature: a story can pass by half and yet be good enough that the sweet part takes up more than the sour part.
The Impatient Writer
After this introduction, and if I have to be more specific, the first thing that comes to mind if I think about the reason why I decided to publish on my own is the word impatience . That desire to “offer the world” as soon as possible what emerges from my brain were impregnated to the marrow of fear of rejection, that someone knowledgeable in the matter would sentence me claiming that I do not know how to write and that I better dedicate myself to something else, I even tried it more, that it did not make me bad blood denying me the obvious.
No thanks, I didn’t need any of that then. And now even less. I live in fucking pain very comfortable in my lie, it is not necessary for anyone to come to slap me with reality and immortal classics of yesterday, today and forever.
That fear, that run that sometimes is heard above the imagination, always superior to self-esteem, will accompany me wherever I go, wherever I arrive, whatever I do, no matter how hard I keep hitting the keys and dedicate a large part from my day to day trying to do better.
Impatience was stronger at first, yes, but the word I would choose today, four novels in tow and so many experiences that my memory begins to claim an external hard drive, would be freedom. I have published what I thought and how much I wanted —three novels between October 2014 and April 2015. Then it would take a year or so to release another one—, when I preferred or could and I have set the price that I have considered appropriate.
These pillars are the protagonists of this article by David Olierwith which I cannot agree more.
Impatient as I was and loving freedom above all else, the definitive term came across my path: self-publishing.
Editorials and freedom
I am sure, or at least it is what I think with a greater conviction, that if I had tried to find a publisher, even having found it and doing well, I would only have done the same as being independent. I’m that realistic. But I doubt that they would have allowed me to publish four novels in less than three years, for example; I also can’t believe that the first two could have been removed in a matter of a couple of months; And it doesn’t matter that they let me participate in a contest as commercial as Amazon’s Indie Contest with a work as non-commercial as The Scream of the Bats.
Anyway, the thing that weighed the most at first was impatience, I admit. After having flattened my butt for hours —the first version of A Wolf LikeMe, the debut, dates from 2008. Then there would be two or three more. I finally published it at the end of 2014. I better not do the math — I didn’t want to sit around waiting for them to reject me or, worse still, watch my entire life go by while no one answered me.
Not to mention how bad it was to get ripped off. Pay to do everything yourself, pay for nothing. No not like that. For that I do it. And free.
If my buttocks suffer from sitting, it may be because I am writing.
That was the image I had of editorials and the one that most beginning writers came to confirm. Later, by snooping around and closely checking other people’s satisfactory experiences, I have begun to see that option from another prism. I have never submitted a manuscript to a publisher, but I can no longer deny that it is a goal to aspire to.
Self-publishing And An Unknown Place
So I started investigating what the heck was self-publishing and who the hell had I tried before. As I learned that there were quite a few writers who made a living by writing independently, I also wanted to know how the hell I could get on the bandwagon, if there was room for someone else.
My eternal thanks to the couple of messages with which Fernando Trujillo encouraged me to try my luck. Along with the myriad of articles and tips that I soaked up in, they were the starting gun.
During that pre-coming out stage of preparation — hey, look at me! I’ve been ghost writing in secret for years but can’t take it anymore, I want the world to know — I hit the bottom of the line. In 2010, due to circumstances that are not relevant except because they finished forging what would later come, I lived in four different cities, some mornings when I woke up I did not know where I was and I felt apathetic and sad.
I decided to remedy it by self-medicating with writing full time.
Let no one take me as a reference or imitate me hoping to find the literary panacea, on Amazon are my numbers. Of course, if I had not made that sacrifice then, most likely I would not have published even half and, which at least personally I consider more worrying, I would still be regretting it.
October 7, 2014 arrived. And my first novel went on sale.
Both A Wolf like Me and Some Weird Sin were published on Amazon, Google Books and Casa delLibro. It took me a short time to learn how it works and less to realize that being on three platforms the only thing that generated me was overwhelm.
