Fun Fact Friday -- Being an Author

 

Happy Friday!

Welcome to another fun filled installment of Fun Fact Friday (Or Your Morning Tidbit if you're joining us on FB). So far I have introduced you to four novels of mine -- 

The Cedar Grove Series of Along the Way and Wherever It Goes were introduced first. Two weeks ago I introduced you to Portrait of an Unlikely Affair and then last week we took a look at The Allegheny Chronicles - Eden and the Alchemist. If you've missed any of these, make sure you scroll down on Facebook, Blogspot, or Substack to read those. 

This week I'm going to let those all marinate with you as the other two books I have available are part of the Portrait series - The Legend of CuSithGrim (book 2) and The Ghost of Oscar (book 3). We'll have plenty of time getting to them. If you've finished reading any of them yet, make sure you let me know what you thought of them by leaving a review over on Amazon. 

So, what are we going to talk about today? 

I'll give you a behind the scenes look at what it means to be a self-published author, which means, yes, I don't have a publisher. A lot of these books out there do fall under someone else's umbrella, which means they have editors, deadlines, advertising money, and people who design their covers for them. 

I'm stubborn. I do it all myself, which can be very good but it can also go very wrong. 

Editor Me and Author Me often have very big disagreements (mostly over punctuation and when Author Me is always wanting to add new content after the 14th proof copy because it "just doesn't flow right yet." Flowing is very important.) Editor Me will also write and erase the same sentence or paragraph a dozen times trying to perfect it, only to decide it was better off the first time. Honestly, I can read something multiple times on a computer screen, think it's perfect so I print it out. When I see it on paper, I'm shocked that it looks like my 5-year-old wrote it. I make the changes, feel satisfied over it, then send it to proof. When it comes back, I wonder if Editor Me was drunk when I line edited the printed copy, and proceed to make red marks all over the pages as I attempt to decipher if something should be a comma or a period. That's when I realize that it's not a college paper needing to have MLA format and I'm not an English teacher so Author Me usually wins out.

Cover Designer Me and Author Me crank out so many amazing covers that it's difficult to choose so I usually turn to my "brain trust" (aka my parents and siblings) and we have a vote and analyze the covers via family chats on Telegram.

Marketing Me is trying so very hard to do research into this new, and sudden, move to being a published author while A Rather Cantankerous Me is frowning equally as hard as I have to write 'descriptions' for the books that sound both alluring and fun while piquing your attention and not giving away the whole danged plot. Often you will hear muttering and mumbling happening over these descriptions. 

Researcher Me is the person we leave alone in the corner with the stacks of books and a laptop as you never quite know what tangent I will discover.

Time has zero meaning for me with any of my self-published hats on, which is why God gave me children, animals, and a husband. They keep me grounded in reality by always letting me know that a minute in my writing world doesn't equal a minute in normal people's world. 

Now, because I am self-published, that doesn't mean I've submitted my work to any publishers and were rejected by them, as some people may wonder. The last time I submitted anything to any publisher was probably 1992 when I had to do it as an assignment as part of a distance learning course via the Institute of Children's Literature. Of course, now with technology, the submittal process has changed a lot since then. Nevertheless, being self-published is a decision I made because of Real Life. It will take me years to locate the correct publisher to fit me and my work and with as many Real Life things going on outside of writing, self-publishing seemed to be the easiest and most logical route into being published at this particular point in time. 

And yes, speaking of Real Life, the timing to my "sudden" decision to move to being a published author has been spurred forth by circumstances involving having a veteran husband with service-related disabilities, who desires to be a stay-at-home dad so his days aren't constantly spent in extremes (I haven't broken it to him that the little squad we created together will be a different sort of extremes.) Anyhow, I'll touch on that reality in my upcoming short stories collection, but I would love to make his dream come true as Life with invisible wounds is a very difficult adventure to navigate when everything in modern life triggers it. I also realize it takes time to become an established author, with an established reader base, there's no time like the present to start becoming that author. Seeing yourself go from 'oh yeah, I like to write in my spare time' to 'oh crap, I'm doing this. I really am an author!' is exciting. It's like finally getting my dream job. 

Being my own publisher doesn't mean the list price on Amazon is what I make on each novel or ebook.  Amazon takes their % of it. Then I pay for a "delivery fee" on each ebook as well as the print costs on all paper backs. Whatever is left over from all of that is what I get in a form called 'royalties.' It's not as glamorous as you'd think, but in the long run, it'll be worth it and is why I appreciate all of you even more. 

So, what's in store here? What do I have planned? Next will be the release of Could've Been Something, which will be a collection of short reads and short stories that I am fond of. It will be fun little reads. After that and over the next few months I will publish that last of the Portrait series with books 4 and 5, which I'm actually rather amazed and excited about. Those are going to be a wild ride! Of course, somewhere in our future, too, will be publishing my fun ghost/mystery/historical bootlegging novel. 

As always, I wouldn't rule out any kind of surprise novels popping up too. You never know with me.  Until then, keep on reading and, if you like it, give it a review and be sure to rave about it to a friend or several hundred friends... In the meantime, if you have any comments or questions let me know!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you enjoyed this look into a Fiction Writer's mind (scary, isn't it?) I hope you have an amazing weekend!

Check out Em Brooks at Amazon