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The Journey Thus Far (Month 1)

The Journey Thus Far (Month 1)

          This blog is many things to me; a way to communicate with an audience, a way to share my writings, and a way to help build a fan base, but most importantly I want to use it to document my journey. Because I am unable to post to my blog every day, I want to emphasize quality over quantity. I had no idea when I first started that author's had to do so many other things besides just writing. Here is an up-to-date list of what has gone on so far:

          I started writing a fictional novel one month ago (approx. 5/15/17). I planned it out for a few days and did some research, jotted down some ideas, and then started writing a story. Since then, I have learned so much about how dialogue works, narration, Point of View, and several other things. I am now nearing completion of my first draft just a month after starting. Tales of Grandeur: Heroes Rise and Fall will be about 200 pages and 50,000 words.

          I created a FaceBook author's page, twitter account, and blog the beginning of this month (approx. 6/1/17). After writing about half of my book, I took a short break to research how to promote yourself. I've always had aspirations of becoming an entrepreneur, but never liked taking too many risks. In order to actually sell a book at all and share my story with others, I would have to let others know that it actually existed. So I decided to do what most successful writers do and create a blog. On top of this, I created social media pages in order to promote this blog as well as my upcoming book. Nobody likes constant promotion of products in their face, that can get annoying fast, so I try not to advertise very much. I try to stay active on both social media and here every single day, and because of that my fan base is growing.

          I started looking into Publishing vs Self-Publishing about a week ago (6/8/17). After reading all about building a community around yourself, I turned my focus to how to get published. There are two ways of doing this, the traditional publishing way where you format your manuscript once its finished and mail it in to different major companies, and wait to hear back. Each publishing company is different, some may require your manuscript to be a certain way, and others may say that you can only send it to them and no one else. On top of this, it could take months, and then they could just send you a rejection letter. The printing and shipping costs alone deterred me a bit from doing this but I researched further because of how determined I am to get published. Then, I stumbled upon the magics of self-publishing. Self-publishing definitely isn't for everyone, but if you're trying to get your foot in the door then it is a start. If you are an unknown and unproven author, the chances of a traditional publishing company picking you up is slim. Self-Publishing instead puts the weight of the world on your shoulders where you take charge of everything. You still have to buy a cover designer and get an editor, as well as promote the hell out of your book, but who said any of this was going to be easy. I'm trying not to name drop much here, but Amazon has an amazing selection of self-published books. Because of it's Kindle deals, you can format your entire finished product within hours and send it off into the world.

          Crowdfunding: GoFundMe and KickStarter. Getting a good editor and cover can cost a pretty penny. I know my future bill is projected to be over $1,000 dollars! But with the advances of the internet, I don't have to take a huge chance like that alone. I recently looked into crowdfunding, as well as asked my social media community about it to see if any of them would back me. I've had mixed results so far, but it has been an amazing experience. I started by researching which would be best for my book, and after learning about all the royalties they take out and yatta yatta yatta, I decided to just try each of them. I created a GoFundMe within an hour, but once I did I realized how limited it was. Sure I could beg for money and probably raise it on GoFundMe, but there just wasn't anything I could offer the community back besides my finished book (which who knows how long that'll take). So I decided to go with KickStarter. Now I should mention that Publishizer.com is another option, but I had already decided to self-publish by this point so that was a no go. It did however give me a lot of incentive to make my book the best self-published book it can be, because I took a look at some of the competition. Anyways, back to KickStarter. Since I wasn't even finished with my first draft at the time, it felt weird creating something for it. However, KS was incredibly easy to use and I already had a ton of ideas, including rewards for those who backed me. After going through the entire process and determining approx. how much money to ask, I hesitated before publishing it. Do I have enough social media backing to pull this thing off? The answer is probably not. I was only asking for about 500 bucks, which I low balled because KS is an all or nothing platform. BUT, even if I got 600 dollars worth of contribution, it still wouldn't have been enough. I was so eager to get started that I was setting myself up for failure and I knew it. So I backtracked on my statements about KickStarter and am now holding off until I have a better understanding on when everything will be done and how it will be done.

This concludes my first months update on what has been going on! Please comment bellow if you have any questions or suggestions for me :)

By C. J. Strong
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