so i've been recently intrigued by this indie author. i found her while looking for cheap nook books(yes i got a nook color for christmas and am in love with it) and i've become completely hooked on her.
amanda hocking.
i searched her out online to get a feel for what kind of an author she was. she's 26 years old with no literary awards. no bachelors degree. no special connections to the literary world. no marketing tactics. (sound familiar?) for years she queried a million agents and publishing companies with no positive results. rejection upon rejection she got really discourage and so in april of this year she decided she was going to self publish. with no expectation of making more than a couple hundreds bucks by the summer, but that's all she wanted.
since april she has published 8 books. EIGHT. she's a freaking writing machine. granted she wrote most of these books before april but the woman deserves some credit. since april she has sold almost 150,000 books. this month alone. december. she sold 99,000 books. through self publishing! i don't know why i'm so fascinated.
which then brought me to a personal decision. the internet at our finger tips has made self-publishing so much easier. you can just upload a book on amazon and barnes and noble and BAMB, you're out in the world sharing your stories. sure there are down sides. but it's a start right?
she has a series called the trylle trilogy(i'm waiting for the third book to come out next month)...that has become so popular, publishing companies are coming to her now. they want her trilogy, but they want her to wait until the end of next year to publish the last book. in case you were curious...which i knew you were...she has declined and decided to stay indie for now.
it's not even that her books are that amazing. they have spelling mistakes and grammar issues because she does it all herself. yes, the 6 that i have read i've enjoyed, but the fact is that she has gotten herself out there through self-publishing. i completely tossed that out the window as an option a year ago because of the horror stories i read about and it was expensive! but now i'm second guessing myself...as much as i want to see big beautiful printed copies of my books...what if that's not the route to go?
so the question i'm throwing out into the universe today is...is it worth it? should i take a risk(when my books are good and ready) and do it myself...or should i do it the traditional way where i could have a greater opportunity to be put out there?(that is if i'm not rejected a million times like her)...
decisions...decisions...
