I've wanted to be a writer for a really long time. I wrote my first story back when I was five. It was like, Lego fanfiction with its only piece of dialogue stolen from Power Rangers Zeo, but it was a story. All through my life I've wanted to be a 'great author', with increasingly delusional ideas of grandeur as I got older. I've worked on my writing for over 15 years, and to be honest I think I'm pretty good. I can only ape the power of narratives of real authors like McCarthy and will never blaze trails in the written world, but I like to think I'm not a bad read these days.
But I think I'm unpublishable. Well, maybe not unpublishable because all sorts of shit gets published, but some of the stuff I really want to write might be a hard sell. But really, I don't think I want to deal with 'being published'. Red's stories about the process, and the things I know about the industry generally, just make the whole thing sound like an ordeal. And more, there's a certain hands-off quality to it which I don't like. You give them the manuscript, then they handle the rest in terms of presentation. something about that doesn't sit right with me. I understand that an important role that publishing houses play is reigning in excess, but I mean they're typically just shoddy at selling a book. There are exceptions, but in a lot of ways it feels farmed out.
I'd still like to be 'an author' (and I'd still like to get paid for my hobby). I have a number of different books I'd like to pour myself into and then pass out to the world, but either can't or won't brave the publishing industry. So I got to thinking, and thought 'well why not just sell e-books'. That's just self-publishing, but the more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that there was a certain kind of legitimacy there that a vanity press lacks. I might just be a little behind the times, but I feel there's scope in web media for electric novels. I know Amazon provides some kind of service, but even regarding their traffic and ease of use, I think I'd prefer to set up my own website. I mean, if you came across a website which was half as cool as this and it was selling a novel, then maybe you'd be interested. I don't know.
And I mean, there's scope to do stuff there which you couldn't in a traditional setting. I don't just mean picking your own cover art, you could integrate art on a wider scale, which is something I'd like to do. You could engage in more interesting methods of marketing and sale on your own initiative. Sure, you won't be on a shelf in a bookstore, but you can't win them all. I'm getting a little ahead of myself here obviously: I have more ideas than novels and can't draw and can't do web design but you know I felt I had to share.
That's it.
Yeah, I went a bit ahead, there...
