Who has self-published on Amazon or another e-book store?

[GrnEyedDvl]

I saw a few threads where people mentioned it, but I have always wondered how many people on TWC have actually done this.

[TheDarkKnight]

MasterofNone is one of them.

I think the other ones have posted in The Arts. I can see if I can find them for you if you want.

[AltThrax]

SeniorBatavianHorse (professional playwright), Kyriakos, Theodotos I.

[Shankbot de Bodemloze]

SeniorBatavianHorse has published a lot of stuff via Smashwords. He also organised a project which saw a group of AAR authors publish an anthology via the same site, although sadly only one volume was published. If you're interested in reading more the thread is here.

[Boriak]

I have a novella published on Smashwords and Amazon. This year, I'm publishing a novel though I will most likely give traditional publishing a go.

[McScottish]

SBH has, and his page can be found...here...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Francis-Hag...3712251&sr=8-1

[Alwyn]

I'm following this thread with interest.

Good luck with your novel, Boriak! Would you recommend publishing on Smashwords and Amazon?

Thanks for the links, Shankbot and McScottish!

[Boriak]

Amazon has a lot more fine print you need to read and still stuff happens that you did not expect. For example, they increased the price of my book because I'm not from one of their conventional areas of coverage (geographically).

Smashwords is a lot more writer friendly. They give you a guide on how to format your manuscript, they transform your manuscript from .doc to .mobi, .epub, .pdf and others, and they even handle the ISBNs.

One major good side about Amazon is that it's basically its own market, with its own search engines, forums, Kindle Boards and such. There's a ton of stuff in there I don't know about.

There's really no point in saying what is best. You simply have to try as many things as possible and see which of them work for you.

[Kilo11]

Glad to see some of the great writers here are getting things out in the world elsewhere as well.

I actually have a question that fits well here and that you more experienced authors who have already published something might be more savvy about. I am writing a more involved AAR that will read basically like a novel, and I was actually hoping to at some point maybe send it off to a journal or publisher when it is all finished. I was wondering if anyone knows whether having things published here already would make that impossible, or if it would still be okay? I guess there are two questions which would need to be asked: (1) do authors who post things on the TWCenter retain full copyright, allowing them to in all safe legality submit that work elsewhere, and (2) would publishers see the publication of something here as a deal-breaker for the signing of any sort of deal? As a follow-up, if the answer to (2) is yes (publication here is a dealbreaker for print publication of that same work) it would be interesting to know whether (2.a) simply deleting everything off the forums first and then submitting would be possible and sufficient for a publisher to agree to a deal.

I know there are lots of more tricky questions there, and I don't expect anyone to have all the answers or necessarily concrete answers, but any input or even general thoughts would be much appreciated!

[NorseThing]

Publishing here or anywhere can decrease the value of future publications if in the end you are wanting compensation. If you post for free and then want to publish for profit, I would suggest an extensive rewriting of the work. The self publishing may be good, but there are some things to consider before self publishing. First, editing -- and by this I do not mean simple formatting, spelling, and grammar. Professional editors of periodicals and books earn their money and more for the writer. Also, if you are truly wanting this as a profession, I suggest also teaming up with an agent. Perhaps you could submit a few short bits for periodicals if no other reason than to get into contact with some editors that show interest in your abilities.

Ah! If only I was young again. There is little I would want a do over on in my life, but to spend more time with my relatives that were published would be one of my choices for a do over.

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

Glad to see some of the great writers here are getting things out in the world elsewhere as well.

I actually have a question that fits well here and that you more experienced authors who have already published something might be more savvy about. I am writing a more involved AAR that will read basically like a novel, and I was actually hoping to at some point maybe send it off to a journal or publisher when it is all finished. I was wondering if anyone knows whether having things published here already would make that impossible, or if it would still be okay? I guess there are two questions which would need to be asked: (1) do authors who post things on the TWCenter retain full copyright, allowing them to in all safe legality submit that work elsewhere, and (2) would publishers see the publication of something here as a deal-breaker for the signing of any sort of deal? As a follow-up, if the answer to (2) is yes (publication here is a dealbreaker for print publication of that same work) it would be interesting to know whether (2.a) simply deleting everything off the forums first and then submitting would be possible and sufficient for a publisher to agree to a deal.

I know there are lots of more tricky questions there, and I don't expect anyone to have all the answers or necessarily concrete answers, but any input or even general thoughts would be much appreciated!

1) The relevant section of the ToS reads:

By viewing the site content, you agree that all content on the TWCenter message boards is the responsibility of the person from which the content originated. You agree that neither TWCenter nor its sponsors or affiliates are responsible for all content that you personally post or upload. TWCenter does not directly control any content posted on the boards, and does not guarantee the truthfulness or quality of any content.

How that interacts with actual copyright law I do not know.

2) Probably.

2a) It has been common practice in the past for people (i.e. serious writers) to delete their work off of here. Whether or not it actually got subsequently published I do not know. I don't know anyone who has been published whose work remains on here though (self-publishing aside).

[Kilo11]

Publishing here or anywhere can decrease the value of future publications if in the end you are wanting compensation. If you post for free and then want to publish for profit, I would suggest an extensive rewriting of the work. The self publishing may be good, but there are some things to consider before self publishing. First, editing -- and by this I do not mean simple formatting, spelling, and grammar. Professional editors of periodicals and books earn their money and more for the writer. Also, if you are truly wanting this as a profession, I suggest also teaming up with an agent. Perhaps you could submit a few short bits for periodicals if no other reason than to get into contact with some editors that show interest in your abilities.

Right now I am more interested in just getting stuff out there (my current contract actually forbids me having any other sources of income anyway, so until that runs out I can't publish for profit), but at some point I would very much like to crack into writing in a more concerted fashion, with an aim to doing it professionally. Given that, I will think carefully about what goes here, what goes elsewhere.

The point about editors and agents are great to know! A friend of mine from where I did my MA actually works in a small publishing company in Germany right now, and I am going to try to have a "consultation" session with her sometime soon to double-check everything, as she should also know some of the more fine point and tricky legal issues that could potentially pop up.

1) The relevant section of the ToS reads:

By viewing the site content, you agree that all content on the TWCenter message boards is the responsibility of the person from which the content originated. You agree that neither TWCenter nor its sponsors or affiliates are responsible for all content that you personally post or upload. TWCenter does not directly control any content posted on the boards, and does not guarantee the truthfulness or quality of any content.

How that interacts with actual copyright law I do not know.

Thanks for the actual wording of the terms Hitai. They do seem to be pretty good for me, in terms of the stuff I post still being "mine", intellectually speaking. And I would imagine that the worst case scenario would be that GreenEyedDevil owns it, since he is the site owner, but I imagine he'd sign any small form in a heartbeat to shore up any legal issues if someone who's posted stuff here wanted to have a clean copyright to the work for purposes of publishing elsewhere. From every encounter I've had with him he's demonstrated himself to be a stand-up guy.

2) Probably.

Yeah, I was afraid of that. I'll tease that answer out more in full from my friend, and relate any useful info back to you guys, in case anyone is interested.

2a) It has been common practice in the past for people (i.e. serious writers) to delete their work off of here. Whether or not it actually got subsequently published I do not know. I don't know anyone who has been published whose work remains on here though (self-publishing aside).

Do you happen to know which people in particular did that, so that I might shoot one of them a pm and check whether deleting it all from here was good enough for a publisher (provided they did end up getting published)?

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

Do you happen to know which people in particular did that, so that I might shoot one of them a pm and check whether deleting it all from here was good enough for a publisher (provided they did end up getting published)?

Most are long gone I'm afraid - none active in the past few years that I recall. Also people have a habit of deleting their work and disappearing without saying anything, so you can never be 100% sure if it was in the interests of publication or not (although we have presumed that to be the case a number of times, given the author and the quality of the work).

Oh, and to answer the OP, dear Lugo was also self-published. Sad to see he wasn't mentioned.

[Kilo11]

That's weird that people would just pack up and leave without a word. Well, I guess I won't be asking them then, but my friend already got back to me and we're gonna try to chat on Thursday, so maybe there will be answers then. I will also be sure to ask her about whether deleting things from a forum would be sufficient for a publisher being okay accepting that previously open access work.

[Kilo11]

So I talked to my friend today and was able to ask her loads of questions about the publishing business and what things someone might need to know, especially if they are posting some of their work online. She works in the translations and foreign acquisitions department of the publishing company (i.e. she has no direct contact with book selection, contract, or editing aspects of the process) and so she was clear to stress that her answers might not be completely on point for everything. However, she did have good feedback for many of the general questions I've asked above, which may be of interest to the aspiring writers here. Here are her thoughts/answers.

1. Publishing on open access forums (like here) would generally be seen as a plus for publishers. Her take was that often people submit works in the hopes of being published, and the editor's first thought is "Who is this guy?". However, if you are already able to show a base of fans (even a small one), then that makes your things more worth carefully considering for that publisher.
2. If published works can be fully removed from the open access source (that seems to be the case here, unless I am wildly mistaken) then there is no real downside to posting things, as potential "losses" of future sales can be mitigated by simply deleting the content.
3. Publishing open access on forums also allows one to outsource/crowdsource some of the editing duties, making up for the lack of a real editor.

She also gave me some info on self-publishing versus traditional-publishing with an established publishing house.
4. Self-publishing has become increasingly common, and gets you around some of the traditional barriers to publishing (your work doesn't fit with the demographic the publisher is trying to reach, your work is too niche, you are unknown, etc.). This alone can make it far more desirable than going traditional.
5. Self-publishing seems to give you a higher cut of all sales (she is double-checking this with a colleague in the contracts department though; I will update this when she gets back to me).
6. If you are well known to a good group of individuals from prior publishing (like putting stuff here), then self-publishing can be more effective due to an established group of interested people.
7. Traditional publishing houses can sometimes be very intrusive to the writing process or work. She told of people having the title of the work changed, or having large sections deleted, and even of writers being given prompts from the publisher where they were basically just told "Write us a book about a kid befriending a turtle and learning an important lesson. Keep it under 120 pages."

All in all, her general thoughts were that online publication would almost always be beneficial, and could only in somewhat rarer cases present a risk. Also, self-publishing can be very simple and rewarding, so long as you aren't really planning on having your primary income come from writing (at least at first; if you become well known you can make fine money with self-publishing). If anyone has other questions/concerns, feel free to shoot me a question. We talked a while and not everything we discussed is down here, and I can also easily talk to her again.

[Admiral Van Tromp]

That was definetly useful, Kilo! Thanks for sharing!

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

As Admiral Van Tromp says, that seems very useful, Kilo11.

I have one question and two comments.

2. If published works can be fully removed from the open access source (that seems to be the case here, unless I am wildly mistaken) then there is no real downside to posting things, as potential "losses" of future sales can be mitigated by simply deleting the content.

Could you explain what you mean by 'fully removed'?

It might also be worth bearing in mind that while your posts are visible, it's possible for people to copy and save the text of your posts whenever they feel like it.

3. Publishing open access on forums also allows one to outsource/crowdsource some of the editing duties, making up for the lack of a real editor.

I'd be very reluctant to crowdsource any kind of editing. (And I'm not even planning to publish my writing.) The reason I'd be very reluctant is that this is the internet. There's a very wide range of ability in English around the internet, and people speak different varieties of English - US English and British English are not the same, to take just one example. You therefore need to be very good at English yourself in order to reliably spot which suggestions are correct for your variety of English. That might end up taking a lot of effort. If you can find someone who's good at the variety of English you need, and who likes editing, that might work, of course.

Having said that, if you do find someone who's interested in editing your work, I think it's only fair to tell them the whole situation before they agree to take the job. If I did a whole load of editing for someone for free, and discovered later they were selling that piece of writing, I'd feel thoroughly cheated, and I might mention that to people. Editing is a very valuable skill, and can make a huge difference to a piece of writing. It's my personal view that if the writing is going to be published for sale, the editor should also be paid, and paid appropriately.

[Kilo11]

Hey Caillagh (awesome screen name, by the way ; I've always loved the way it rolls off the tongue!),

To the question, what I mean is just that things can be properly deleted from here (again, unless I am mistaken), and aren't stored in some dark archive like things posted on facebook or other sites that use data and posts to sell to advertisers. Given that, if it needs to be taken down, it can be, without any real issue. I do also recognize that things can be copy pasted, but the only issue a publisher may have is if the material is actually open access. If you have taken down your work but someone else has copy pasted it without your permission and decides they'll reupload it somewhere else, then (I'd assume) you have a real lawsuit that can be drawn against them for theft of intellectual property. The only thing I would recommend for the more security conscious writer is to maybe also have a website or archive with your own real name on it where your stories are reposited and time-stamped, so that if someone did take your work and submitted it under their name, you'd have a bit of evidence that it is yours and has been yours for some time.

Regarding editing, I didn't mean the nuts and bolts of proof-reading (any really competent English speaker can do that [that group is not entirely coextensive with the people who are "native" English speakers ]), I was more getting at the meat of an editor's job, which is to give bigger comments about structure and style and maybe plot development. Those are the big things that can take an interesting narrative and turn it into a compelling story, and almost anyone can say something of merit to that, as we are all readers of something or other, and know a good twist or character or setting when we come across one. My point was more that the feedback one can get from a crowd will include nearly as much good stuff as what you get from an editor. There will be a lot of things to be taken with a grain of salt as well (not everyone in the crowd is necessarily the sharpest), but there are enough people that you can get good comments and suggestions out of it. That being said, a good editor is always a boon, and if someone wants to have one, I would not say a thing against that.

I also agree about the compensation issue, especially if you have one person doing a lot of work. My thought though was more that the things posted here get commented on by most of us who read them, because we care about each other doing that little bit better, and there is an implied reciprocity clause that says you read others' work if they've read yours. (Obviously that can be abused, but that's an entirely separate and other concern.) And if the edits are spread around, with each of us doing a little bit for everyone else, then everyone benefits, and no one needs to be worried about wiring a fraction of a royalty to each person on the threads, because we've all paid each other in full by helping each other out. What can I say; I'm an idealist individualist

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

Hey Caillagh (awesome screen name, by the way ; I've always loved the way it rolls off the tongue!),

Thank you!

(Now I'm intrigued to know how you're pronouncing it...)

To the question, what I mean is just that things can be properly deleted from here (again, unless I am mistaken), and aren't stored in some dark archive like things posted on facebook or other sites that use data and posts to sell to advertisers. Given that, if it needs to be taken down, it can be, without any real issue. I do also recognize that things can be copy pasted, but the only issue a publisher may have is if the material is actually open access. If you have taken down your work but someone else has copy pasted it without your permission and decides they'll reupload it somewhere else, then (I'd assume) you have a real lawsuit that can be drawn against them for theft of intellectual property. The only thing I would recommend for the more security conscious writer is to maybe also have a website or archive with your own real name on it where your stories are reposited and time-stamped, so that if someone did take your work and submitted it under their name, you'd have a bit of evidence that it is yours and has been yours for some time.

Obviously, TWC isn't planning to sell your posts to anyone. But if you want your posts to be deleted so that TWC holds no record of their contents, I believe that is possible - though I know nothing about the technical workings of TWC, so I may be wrong about that! There may be a way for Writers' Study staff to do that kind of permanent delete, but I'd need to check with Technical Staff to be sure - it's always possible that what I think is a permanently deleted post can still be found somehow by those technical geniuses.

Editing your own post to be a blank post won't remove all the details of your original post (records of the edit history are automatically stored). So if you do ever want posts deleted, you'll need to ask a staff member. We're happy to help - but please make sure you explain that you want your post deleted so that it can never be retrieved.

Having evidence of copyright is always a good idea, I think.

(I'm not suggesting it would be straightforward to bring a case against some unidentifiable person on the internet. You'd need to ask a lawyer about that - in real life, not here. But your prospective publisher might quite like you to have evidence that you hold the copyright.)

What I was thinking of, though, is your comment that an author would be able to sell their work to their fans on TWC. It would have to be a really good book for me to buy it if I've already read it. That's perfectly possible, though it's less likely than me buying a book I haven't already read. But the people who've already saved their own copy might be even less inclined to buy the book than I would be.

I also agree about the compensation issue, especially if you have one person doing a lot of work. My thought though was more that the things posted here get commented on by most of us who read them, because we care about each other doing that little bit better, and there is an implied reciprocity clause that says you read others' work if they've read yours. (Obviously that can be abused, but that's an entirely separate and other concern.) And if the edits are spread around, with each of us doing a little bit for everyone else, then everyone benefits, and no one needs to be worried about wiring a fraction of a royalty to each person on the threads, because we've all paid each other in full by helping each other out. What can I say; I'm an idealist individualist

Ah. I think the apparent disagreement here might just be that I'd describe this differently from the way you would.

I'd call that 'taking advice from readers I trust, and whose opinions seem pretty close to mine'.

I still think that if you're planning to sell your work, it's best to say so before anyone offers any kind of help, though. A lot of people will be happy to help anyway, but a few people might prefer not to if they feel they're helping you to make money - and it could cause bad feeling if you haven't mentioned your plans in advance.

[Kilo11]

Editing your own post to be a blank post won't remove all the details of your original post (records of the edit history are automatically stored). So if you do ever want posts deleted, you'll need to ask a staff member. We're happy to help - but please make sure you explain that you want your post deleted so that it can never be retrieved.

I thought as much and would have spoken to some member of the tech staff in the event of wanting things deleted, but the confirmation is always good to see. So, for anyone following the thread so far, speak to the TWC staff if you really need to delete some story from here for publication purposes, and don't trust a simple edit-clearing of your posts.

Having evidence of copyright is always a good idea, I think.

(I'm not suggesting it would be straightforward to bring a case against some unidentifiable person on the internet. You'd need to ask a lawyer about that - in real life, not here. But your prospective publisher might quite like you to have evidence that you hold the copyright.)

Regarding copyright and having your name to things, I have actually been wondering how difficult it would be for there to be a field added to the "Optional Information" portion of the "Edit Profile" screen here on TWC where we could put in our actual name? Being in the optional area, we could still opt to have it not be visible, in the same way we can hide our birthday, but then our own name would be associated with our posts and could be verified by the tech staff in the case of any kind of issue. Since it only requires the adding of one small field, it seems like a rather simple and elegant solution for potential future copyright issues some might be worried about.

What I was thinking of, though, is your comment that an author would be able to sell their work to their fans on TWC. It would have to be a really good book for me to buy it if I've already read it. That's perfectly possible, though it's less likely than me buying a book I haven't already read. But the people who've already saved their own copy might be even less inclined to buy the book than I would be.

Ah, I see the confusion. I didn't mean actually having people here purchase things you've written and posted that they've already seen. The thought was more that these people might become interested in your writing in general, and be more apt to get things you publish that aren't here. Also, a big part of becoming known is still the time tested method of word-of-mouth, and if you have a few hundred people following you here, then they will tell friends of theirs who might like your work about you, and some of them may buy the books, and then epidemiology kicks in for the win! The point of taking things down before publishing for real is so that any of those people who are now interested can't just download the text.

I still think that if you're planning to sell your work, it's best to say so before anyone offers any kind of help, though. A lot of people will be happy to help anyway, but a few people might prefer not to if they feel they're helping you to make money - and it could cause bad feeling if you haven't mentioned your plans in advance.

That's a good point and worth everyone bearing in mind. I tend to forget that, because I just help and assume reciprocity is in place and we can forget the money (I actually really don't like money in general, so I tend to push it out of my mind as quickly as possible) but some people may be disinclined to give anything away for free, even a simple word of advice, and so if someone is looking to later publish something they post here, it would be good to make that clear in the original first post so that readers know their comments may be incorporated into the writing or used for editing purposes.