I’ve been saying for years that the pressure on traditionally published authors to do most of the work themselves will reach the point where it’ll start overlapping with self-publishing. So I figured it was time to put my money (or my work, at least), where my mouth is. 1/
I’ve self-published before. The first time was long before my first books, with a comic called Twisted I got printed way back in the olden days, pre-internet. I didn’t continue it because I didn’t know enough much about selling and the illustration work started picking up. 2/
Years later, I released the novella, The Vile Desire to Scream free online – though only on my website – to promote the Wildenstern Saga, my Irish steampunk books. There was some decent pick-up on it, and interestingly, the PDF did much better than the epub file back then. 3/
When Open Road Media released a bunch of my books in the US, I did two more novellas, The Need for Fear and Spoil the Kill, and Open Road published all three alongside the novels. But the self-publishing environment has changed completely in the last ten years . . 4/
. . . What with keywords and subtitles and categories within categories and a market flooded with generated text. And in a fine piece of irony, the Evil Empire offers the best options, the greatest reach and the *biggest cut for authors* (publishers take note). So yes, I’m going with Amazon. 5/
And the FIRST thing I found out is that the book can’t even be found in search unless it’s *selling enough* which is a GREAT Catch 22 situation. People can't find it if it doesn't sell, but you can't sell if people can't find it if they don't have the link: 7/
www.amazon.com/dp/B0D8TF3Z3W
Anyway, I wanted to try a narrative device I haven’t seen used anywhere before, I wanted to do some dark, slightly head-melting science fiction and I’ve never actually illustrated the cover for one of my novels. 8/
