I was recently reminded of the anniversary of a milestone – the pending publication of The Secret of Possum Hollow, the third of five published novels revolving around the fictional town of Magnolia Ohio. There were only a handful of readers of what I consider to be one of my two best “Magnolia” stories, making the enterprise less than renumerative. The artwork on the cover was purchased from an outfit offering pre-made book covers; the inside layout done by an outfit named BookFuel. Despite the cost of the services, I was quite pleased with the job done by BookFuel, so I decided to contact them again in conjunction with my latest project, Still Life.
When I went to contact BookFuel, I found that they were AWOL. Gone. Vamoosed.
My first contact with BookFuel was with its founder. He had read an early draft of the book which became Saving Magnolia and offered to publish it gratis. As I still had work to do on the novel, I politely declined – promising to contact him when I felt the book was finished. I eventually finished Saving Magnolia and trusted BookFuel to format the interior and provide the spine and back cover.
I was pleased enough with the job that I went ahead and had BookFuel do the cover and interior formatting for The Magnolia Chronicles. By then I had spent the better part of a thousand dollars to publish a couple of books with less than 50 sales, total.
I’m not whining by any stretch of the imagination. I had taken a course in “Novel Writing” which included a section covering “Vanity Publishers.” A vanity publisher, of which Vantage Press is likely the best known, offers complete services starting at a mere five figures. My dealings with BookFuel cost considerably less, allowing me to pursue a dream without breaking the bank… an important consideration since I was looking at investing five figures as a down payment of a home of my own. For my money, I got professional looking books which made me proud without the hassle of finding an agent who might find me a publisher and/or a professional editor.
BookFuel was one of several smaller companies catering to people like me. They’re still out there. I get regular emails from at least two service providers for independent or self-publishers. A recent check on pricing shows that pricing is up. Understandable. The demand is there. From what I understand, there are upwards of 300,000 people just here in the United States writing books of one sort or another. Granted, many of those authors are in academia – but not as many as you would believe. Just in the past few years, my mother-in-law, her husband, and my wife’s brother have all written books of one sort or another. Granted, there are three memoires included (the father-in-law wrote two and edited another book just to be on the safe side) in that count, but still, a book is a book.
Anyhoo, in my case, I have at least four books on “hold,” pending the question of how I should market my product. Obviously, it would be nice to have a publisher other than me, doing the lifting while I don’t do much more than write. A friend here in the DFW Metromess has a publisher, but that publisher won’t touch the types of stories I’m writing (think Lake Wobegon with an attitude). An acquaintance about a thousand miles north and east of my little corner of the DFW Metromess is self-published – but he spends a great deal of time on social media essentially promoting his books for free.
What should I be doing, other than throwing out this question on my blog?
I’m going to keep rolling that question around in my head for a little bit. In the meantime, I believe I shall just keep on writing.
Be Seeing You!
bdharrellauthor 