Self-publishing, is it for you?

By Vella Munn

Self-publishing has been around for a number of years but its uncharted territory for anyone who hasn't done it. The concept sounds great, doesn't it? No longer do we have to spend months and sometimes years looking for a publisher willing to hand us a contract. The creations we worked so hard to write will effortlessly be available to buyers at Amazon, iBooks, Nook, Kobo, etc, and the money will start pouring in.

Maybe. Maybe not.

My purpose in presenting the self-publishing workshop at the 2015 Women Writing the West conference was to give members as much information as possible in a condensed form so hopefully they can answer that maybe. I've learned a lot in the process of self-publishing about ten titles and don't want to keep my knowledge to myself.

I started preparing for the workshop with a question I hope writers are asking themselves—is running the entire show of going from idea to finished and published project for me? Do I have it in me and do I know what I'm getting into? Can I do the job better than a publisher?

Does that sound scary? Not to fear. There's a wealth of help and hand holding out there. When I initially took that leap of reckless abandon with several older contemporary romance novels whose rights had reverted back to me, that wealth didn't exist. It was a kind of Wild West. Now hundreds of sites/blogs exist to support writers during their journey. (And some exist to separate writers from their money).

My handout includes the sites I found most helpful when it came to getting avellamunn@gmail.com. In it I list the primary retailers like Amazon and identify the most experienced uploaders. I give some direction about where to look for editors and copyeditors as well as a list of promoters that give writers the most bang for their promotional dollars. There's even help on where to look for reviews and which companies handle print distribution.

grasp on the pros and cons of joining the publishing revolution. If you'd like a copy of the handout, email me at

That said, if I could tell writers just one thing about educating themselves about self-publishing, it would be to Google the name Marie Force. Marie was in the right place at the right time with the right books and with so much energy she makes my head swim. She is making a fortune as her own publisher now with a marketing team behind her. What has me praising her is her willingness to share her knowledge. Plain and simple, she's a businesswoman. She started the selfpublishing Yahoo group that now has thousands of members. For $20 a writer can take her comprehensive workshop via https://marieforce.com/virtual-workshops  I took it a couple of months ago and couldn't recommend it more.

My journey has been exciting/scary/and everything in between. And now that I've done it, what do I think of self-publishing? That's a subject for a different blog but I can be bribed.
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Vella Munn and her books can be found at

http://www.vella-munn.com/
https://www.facebook.com/vella.munn
Amazon Author Page: http://tinyurl.com/qedbsrz