Almost a month away from my books release and I thought I would reflect a bit on the wild ride that is self-publishing. First off, like most authors, I did in fact think that my work was good enough to be bought by traditional publishers. However instead of going through the painfully long process of trying to be picked up by these companies I decided early on that the message needed to be told now.

So the research began. Where do I self-publish and who is best? I looked into all the big companies.. LuLu, IUniverse etc. After doing my due diligence I realized that these companies were about one thing – initial profit made from authors investments. Their marketing packages were a joke. They would send you business cards and put you on Amazon and B&N.com. The only plans that were any good were the ones that cost thousands of dollars and even then they seemed flimsy. This is an important book. It is not an authors fiction novel dream, I am an artist not an author. But the subject NEEDS to be expressed and talked about. I can’t rely on weak-marketing, how else will I get the word out?

Slowly moving away from these companies I got a referral to an individual from a friend. She had been in traditional publishing for years and was starting her own self-publishing company. She had great ideas and sounded infinitely excited to get started. I put my faith in this option and had an agreement with her months before the release date. She would handle the editing and marketing, with a big exclamation point on marketing. Well after months of her dissappearing and re-appearing I found myself at our pre-sale day with no edited book and no word from her for weeks before. Needless to say I was out $700 and she would not answer my calls or emails. Stressed out and upset I knew my lesson was learned.

I finally got fed up and realized that all of these self-publishing companies were just middle-men between you and the printer. Essentially, you were paying them to send your information to the printer. Well after making up my mind I decided that I would handle everything. I have some business background and whereas I don’t know too much about publishing/distributing books, I do have my feet planted in the art world. I figured that was a start.

So I got a great contact and picked up a fellow professor to handle my editing. I also found a fantastic printer which had lots of positive feedback tied to it. After this ray of sunshine I started the website and starting marketing the book. This was going well. People were starting to pay attention to the book and the momentum started to build. I then realized that I would need to have a company tied to the sales of the book so that uncle Sam doesn’t chop my hands off. So I began Artoholic Publishing, LLC which will handle all my marketing/distributing/selling. I may even take on other art-related books in the future…

So it is one month before my books release and I have full control. Sure, I don’t feel as confident in the scope of the book as I once did and this certainly makes me more busy. However after jumping into the self-publishing world I can at least feel at ease that I won’t screw myself.