Archive for March 29, 2018

Business Stuff

I had a dentist appointment yesterday morning, which somehow managed to throw off my whole schedule for the day, so there was another oops morning of forgetting to post.

Meanwhile, I’ve been busy with some business-related stuff.

My agent has been handling my independently published books, working almost like a publisher in handling the business side of things, but she’s transitioning away from doing that, so I’ll be handling it all myself in the future. In the long run, it will probably be good because I get the royalties without paying a commission and because it gives me a lot more direct control over my books. In the short run, there are some transition headaches because we have to remove the books from all those sales venues and then I have to repost them myself. At the moment, things are kind of in flux because it takes a little time to get everything up again. I’m updating the links on my web site as I go, but it may still be a week or so before everything is settled. There may be some places where books are no longer available because my agent was able to get access but I can’t on my own, or she was able to get a special deal that I can’t get. For instance, I won’t have books on Google Play anymore because they’re difficult for an individual author to deal with, but I only sold a few copies total there, anyway, so I’m not too worried. I’ll probably only have paperbacks through CreateSpace rather than in the Ingram catalog because Ingram requires a lot of up-front fees. My agent was able to get a deal that cut those down, but I don’t sell enough books there to make their full fees worthwhile.

On the other hand, since I’m going with a distributor for everything but Amazon, my books may now be in some new places, where I hope to find some new readers.

I’m sure everyone who bothers to read my blog has already got copies of everything, so this probably won’t affect you. There just may be some challenges temporarily if you’re recommending books to others or trying to buy gifts.

I’m looking forward to getting back to the writing part of work after spending a few days uploading files and filling out web forms.

This is why I want to find a new publisher. I know some people love the business side of things and like having total control over everything. I’d rather just hide in my cave and write and let someone else do all the other stuff. I’m glad to have the option of putting books out myself because it’s kept my career alive and makes me a decent amount of money, but it’s kind of a struggle for me, and even more so now. I guess in the future it won’t be quite so tedious if I’m just doing one book at a time rather than my entire catalog all at once.