I’m A Real Boy! (Not A Fake)
I can’t count how many times in my short career of being a self-published author that I’ve heard the ooh and ahh from people when I tell them that I’m an author. The second question that always comes up, ALWAYS, is this. “What do you write?”
Now, I’ll save the inevitable disappointed face when I happily and proudly announce that I write romance for another post. Today we’re focusing on the next reaction which is this.
“You’re an author! How cool! Who do are you published with?”
“I’m an indie author. I self-publish on Amazon.”
Then the frown. Ugh. I’m sure we all know the frown that means ‘I’ve been lied to‘. What goes through their head is ‘they’re not a real author if a publisher doesn’t even want them. They must be terrible!‘
Yes, it’s all said in a simple look.
I often feel just like Pinocchio in those moments. Not the whole nose growing thing, (although marketed to men, I’m sure it would sell). No, I’m talking about that moment when he tells his bullies “I’m a real boy!”
Just because I’m not published by one of those Big-5 romance content farms doesn’t mean that my books are trash and terrible and I don’t know what I’m doing. No, I’ve been honing my craft for so many years that I’m friggin’ prickly as could be! Well, maybe that’s not a good thing. Anyway, my point is, don’t let that look get to you!
If only people knew the hard work that goes into making a book. The hours and hours of research about cultures, people, languages, land, cities, weather, personal style, identity, etc. etc. We indie authors put blood sweat and tears into our books, and when we finally press the simple keystrokes ‘The End’, well, that’s where the real work begins.
Next is editing. Now, there are two choices here. Edit yourself if you’re broker then the Ten Commandments, or hire someone on Fiverr and hope they’re actually a native speaker to the language you wrote in, and then you pray and pray that they actually know what the heck they’re doing. Either of these options work. Sort of.
So after that unbelievable stresser, you send your books off to beta readers. Oh Wait. There’s no such thing as a site for beta readers. Except Goodreads, but that place is a cesspit…Dang. Your options are limited.
So, after spending days and countless hours researching where to find a beta reader, you give in and go onto Goodreads anyway because, well, there aren’t any other options that won’t cost you an arm and a leg. So after waiting days and days for replies to your wickedly amusing post, you get a beta reader (or two if you’re lucky) who has likely never beta read before. (That’s where people go to learn how to do it. When they figure it out they start to charge $25 a word.) You’ll get your manuscript back three weeks later when they promised to do it in just a few days, and you will get one of two likely results.
A) They give you almost nothing and you have to pull any bit of information about your book out like friggin’ wisdom teeth,
or
B) You’ll get so many opinions by said reader that you can’t tell up from down. Not facts, not anything about what a beta reader is for, but opinions on how the story should have gone, on how a character should have been. Or heaven help you, you’ll get someone who tells you it’s terrible and don’t ever write again. (Those are usually the people who don’t even like the genre you wrote your book in)
So, after that either large or tiny amount of information, you have the second round of edits.
Then round three.
And four.
You’ll edit so many times that you’ll begin to hate your book just a little bit and you just want it out there.
Now for the tough stuff. Ugh. The synopsis.
You’ll spend hours banging your head against your desk (or subsequent area you sit at with your computer) and you cry to the gods of writing to help you figure out how to condense your 100,000 word book into something that’s around 150 words. And it’s supposed to be SOOO good that you draw in strangers who have never once heard of you and those few words will need to double duty and get them to buy (or download) your book sight unseen.
No pressure.
So when that anxiety attack is done, you’ll move on to a cover. Again with Fiverr. Or do it yourself, if you have the courage.
When you have ALLLLL the pieces together to make your book shine like a friggin’ lighthouse off the coast of Scotland, you upload your book. And that’s when the REAL real work starts.
Marketing.
Somehow we indie authors have to be the handymen of the literary world, figuring out how to do it all ourselves until we can make enough from our book sales to not only support ourselves, but to pay someone to take off some of the heavy load.
It all sounds pretty crummy, doesn’t it? And one might ask why?
This is why. We have a story to tell and nobody else will tell it. Especially the content farms known as publishers out there that make the same book with different character names and locations.
There’s a reason their market is dying and we are taking the majority place. Because we tell stories about people. We write books about romance. We can actually have the opportunity to change someone’s life.
Honestly, some of the reviews I’ve gotten from readers has made me emotional. And I’m not an emotional person. Call me Jet, because I can be a ‘cold hard b**ch’ when I want to be. But these people have spilled their hearts out to me, telling me how my story meant so much to them. How the story felt like their story. They cried, they felt validated and understood, they were emboldened and eventually changed. If there is no other reason to go on making books that only reach a few thousand hands, then fine. At least it’s been for something.
My readers mean everything to me, and what I do, I do it for them. Our world is a hard enough place without making stories that tear apart our self-esteem, our relationships, and our lives with unrealistic expectations of life and love.
No, you can keep your publishing deal, and I’ll keep writing what I want to write. I’ll keep writing for the people instead of the money, and I’ll keep taking those looks because I’m a ‘real boy’.
