Self publishing

Gotta tell you--- I am a big fan of self publishing.

A lot of work? Hell yes. You assume the reigns of an entire publishing house, from reading to marketing to setting up your face to face meet and greets to interviews. You arrange for your own editor and proof reader and become your own design consultant, even though self pub sites tend to have solid, if not simplistic, cover design creators. You have to beg, plead, grovel and cajole friends and family alike to try to get some traction and spread the word. You have to call in massive favors and hope that what you're asking for can make a difference. I have friends who've done this--- and more. They smile when they tell the war stories but you know---- it's really tough on them after a while. 

Formatting? Most sites will do it for you and help you along step by step. But, as easy as they make it, this is still the world of computers and glitches will send you up a wall. I had a few that caused two false starts and about two weeks of troubleshooting before I was able to track down the little darlings. 

But in the end, you get an amazing opportunity-----you can publish your own work. It's your dream, bound in hard or soft cover and sitting there on your desk, just like you imagined it would one day. No longer are you at the mercy of some 22 year old English major who couldn't find a job teaching once they left college so they became a reader at a publishing house for starvation level wages while living in their parent's basement. They're the ones that decide whether you get the privilege of talking to someone about the possibility that maybe there's slight interest in looking over your work for the purpose of maybe adding it to their 2019 schedule. Oh wait, what's that..? You're a first time author...? Sorry---- only SERIOUS writers are considered. 

No---- when you self publish you bypass all that.  You put success or failure in the hands of the people who read. And that's really the way it should be. Your success story starts with one idea------'what if?' It's where mine began---- and I still have miles to go before I sleep (apologies to the late Robert Frost) . But today, I have an actual book on the marketplace. And I can sit back and say, let the readers judge. No one else, qualified or not, will decide whether my story should or shouldn't be published. It is. Thank you one and all that made that possible.

Go for it. It's a great feeling.