Why Self Publish?

Hello! First blog post, and a little nervous. Not entirely sure how these things work, but I'll do my best. I'll probably end up using the blog section to ramble about things too long for Instagram or too random for other platforms.

As I mention in the About Me section of the main site, Yule's Son was born, not unlike Brandr himself, around the Winter Solstice. That specific Winter Solstice just happened to be 2013, 12 years ago at this point! A lot has changed since then. I was in high school at the time and I had just started dating the man who is now my husband, so it feels like several lifetimes ago. Yule's Son has become a thread between so many disparate eras of my life, and it has grown and changed so much in that time.

For a long time I wanted what I considered the "traditional dream" in publishing. Query letters, literary agents, pitching the book, 6-figure book deal, TV-show spin-off - you know, the usual. As I got further into looking into the publishing process, the more disenchanted I became. As amazing as all the aforementioned would be, it does come at a cost.

To start with, the odds of being picked up are not high. There's a lot of rejection every step of the way. If you're accepted, it comes with a few catches. For a lot of people, it comes with a certain understanding that you are not the sole owner of your book anymore. Creative freedom is constrained for marketability and to stay within industry standards. I get why they do it, publishing is a business just like anything else, and they have to make money.

Yule's Son, as it is now, is not easy to market. I understand that...

The characters are young enough to be Middle Readers heroes and heroines, but the topics covered are decidedly not, and veer more toward Young Adult. I like to tell people that I absolutely could and would have read it at their age, but that doesn't mean others are the same. I think the book is good for select younger folks (the kids like me, when I was their age) and up through teens and adults. The series itself will follow the characters through adulthood and get more grown-up as it goes, so it only makes sense for the audience to follow their ages.

The manuscript itself is sitting around 120k words (believe it or not, it started even longer). Young Adult novels and debut novels are generally told to stay under 100k words. This tends to make it easier to pitch to new readers when you don't have a name to sell it on, and less of a gamble.

What it comes down to is that I'm a little bit of a creative control freak. I have put almost half my life into this book and the Sagas, and it is too near and dear to my heart for me to surrender the one thing that brought it to life - me, and the influence of a close group of friends who helped me every step of the way.

This isn't a no to future traditional publishing dreams, but it's a not right now. Self and indie publishing is a beast all its own, mostly financial. Would it be nice to have everyone else doing marketing, making little decisions, and funding the whole endeavor? Absolutely. But alas, the price I must pay is generally just money. A lot of it. Who knew self publishing was so expensive! (The answer is anyone who has self-published.)

So if you've gotten this far, and made it through my ramblings, all I have to say it thank you for showing an interest and for following along as I make my way through this next challenge. I couldn't do it without you all.

~ Madeline