In eBook Self-Publishing, Think Like a Dandelion

In this day and age, where anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection can churn out "books", self-publishing has become something of a cottage industry. I have openly suggested in a prior hub that it is a bad idea to self-publish on the Kindle and the Nook, because it is a waste of time, in general, I also suggested that forming a collective is not a bad idea. In this prior article, I also suggested that the way to succeed at writing is to think like a dandelion. This is a quote picked up from Cory Doctorow, talking about media content in the age of perfect copying available to us on-line. In this era, pouring all our resources into just one format is a losing prospect when formats change rapidly. I am currently self-publishing, not because I believe it is a chance at success, but because I believe it is another place to propagate the seeds of my ideas, at a very low cost of time and no investment of money, at all.

Along these lines, I, too, am self-publishing under two pseudonyms, with the help of a friend. I am digging up old, musty drafts and tossing them up into the world. I am even going to start putting together collections of articles I've written here, there, and everywhere, and placing them up in the world. I don't believe in self-publishing, in general. However, I do think like a dandelion. I want to make sure my content is available to people wherever they happen to be. If the content is good, people will eventually welcome it.

Though I don't have any plans to do any sort of promotion or tweeting or media campaign for my own self-published eBooks beyond just this meager hub, I think it is important to talk about why I would do it.

• Because it's easy.
• Because books and magazines are changing very rapidly, and the work I have been doing for years is not even recognizable to me some days, when I compare it to what this job was like when I started.
• Because it's allowing my product (my "content") to slip out into the world in a new way, increasing the likelihood that someone may find it, and offer payment for my work.

I have absolutely no expectation of success. This is not an ideal location for the material, and it will not flower into the highest form of itself possible. If I sold five copies, total, over the course of twenty years, I'd be surprised. Still, this is a dandelion seed. I throw my seeds into the world, into every corner I can place them. It is easy to do so, and as long as I do not perceive this as a "career" as a "self-published/Indie author", rather view it as a "copy" of my "previously published" work, then I'm doing just fine. I will not promote the eBooks, either. I'll just leave them there, in this crack of the pavement, waiting to see if anyone finds them, dusts them off, and decides to have a go. But me? I'm with my chaps in the cafe, working on books for publishers that pay something. Eventually, when the rights revert, I'll probably eBook those, too. But, I'll definitely prefer to have a re-release of the book through a major publisher long instead of just letting my back catalogue squat in a corner of someone's Kindle for a few decades, like a seed fallen into a huge pile of seeds, all waiting for some lunatic out to find that needle in the haystack that just happens to be my needle.

Anyway, link to one of them is below. We've got a placeholder cover until I finish finagling the rights to the art I like, and laying it all out. It may take a while, though, as I'm going to do the work for my mates before my own. Seems only fair.