Fiction Scribe

Want to get published? Do it yourself – and make a living from it!

Novice or Seasoned… New to the publishing game? TWFSP takes you step-by-step through every stage of your publishing success story. Been around the block a few times? You’ll walk away with a whole host of new tools and insights. Far from theoretical, TWFSP is one big case study: the author’s own “real-world� success chronicle.

In this how-to book from Peter Bowerman, nothing is hidden and no resources are withheld. Bowerman lays it all out for you so you have a true step-by-step guide instead of only the bits and pieces of what he wants to share.

TWFSP is an excellent book if you’re looking for a resource book in pursuing self-publishing. It’s easy to read and can probably answer any questions you have. Bowerman has a way of talking to you rather than at you about things so you can’t help but start feeling excited about the future possibilities for your book(s).

You have to be careful with charisma, though, because it’s easy to get caught up in an idea. While he does mention it in the first chapter, Bowerman could have spent more time emphasizing that it takes a lot of hard work to sell a book on your own and it also takes your own money to make things start happening.

Overall, this book is a great resource. It’s full of websites, examples, to-do lists, and much much more that any author or would-be author would benefit from having around.

Author Peter Bowerman, Mr. Well Fed Writer, is joining us for three days here on Fiction Scribe. He’ll be talking about his writing, his book, and self-publishing today. Today is his last day here, so be sure to stop by and say hello.

While “self-publishing� has had a bad name, I’m living proof that there’s a new definition out there, one with rising profits as well as rising industry respect. And as it gets progressively harder to land a deal with a conventional publisher, more and more of those writers and aspiring writers with books inside them are starting to (cautiously) glance in this direction.

Not sure which publishing path to take? As I see it, if you’re writing non-fiction, non-fiction how-to (my genre), or even niche fiction (i.e., romance, mystery, horror, sci-fi, etc) to a certain extent, the only reason NOT to self-publish is you simply don’t have the money and/or the time to devote to your self-publishing adventure.

If you don’t have the money, but DO have the time, then conventional publishing will at least provide you with the funding, but remember: the marketing support you get from a publisher will typically be jaw-droppingly negligible. Most of it still falls to you. If you’re okay with the reality of busting your tail for “pocket-change� royalties, go for it (no, I’m not biased towards self-publishing…

If you have neither time nor money, then consider POD (print-on-demand). But be realistic. POD makes sense mainly for those who simply want to be able to call themselves “authors� and make their book available to friends and family. Forget about making much money as a POD author – in the overwhelming bulk of cases, it just ain’t gonna happen. True fact: The average POD author sells 100-150 books, and guess who’s buying two-thirds of them? The author!

General rule of thumb in publishing? Your potential return is directly proportional to the level of your investment – both in money and time. True for a lot of things, I suppose.

Some advice? Make excellence your motto. Sounds cliché (“yeah, yeah, I know that…�) but creating a book that stands out in the marketplace and indeed delivers the potential of a full-time living requires excellence on many levels: excellence in the quality of your manuscript (i.e., write a damn good book; shoot for, at the very least, conventional wisdom that says it’s “one of the best books in the genre�); in the production quality of the book itself; in the quality of the marketing materials you create; in the comprehensiveness and quality of your book web site; in your customer service; in the effort you bring to talks, speeches, and book signings, etc.

Let me tell you this: there are few feelings to compare with creating a really good book, making it the best it can be, bringing it to market and creating a full-time (or even part-time) income stream from it. That’s big stuff. I wish that for you.

Author Peter Bowerman, Mr. Well Fed Writer, is joining us for three days here on Fiction Scribe. He’ll be talking about his writing, his book, and self-publishing today.

Even those authors who manage to gain entry to The Publishing Kingdom quickly discover that the emperor truly has no clothes: paltry royalties, up to two years to publication, the loss of creative control and relinquished book rights. And the most unpleasant realization of all? Even after all those concessions, authors are still expected to shoulder the lion’s share of the book promotion burden themselves! All to earn – in most cases – far less than a buck a book.

Self-publishing offers the opportunity to take the reins of your own book journey. You keep control of the process, the timetable, the rights, and most of the money. Given that have to do most of the marketing yourself even in a conventional publishing scenario, why not reap most of the rewards? Yes, you have to foot the bill for your publishing efforts, but if done right, whatever you invest can quite realistically come back many times over.

Me? I began as an unknown author with one book, NO big publisher, NO publicist, NO big marketing budget and NO publishing experience whatsoever. I was in the black in 90 days, and subsequently turned that book into a full-time living for five-plus years (more like seven-plus now with two more books under my belt).

Of course, I often hear, “I don’t know anything about marketing and book promotion.� Well, I firmly assert that commercial success as a self-publishing author is far more about a process than an aptitude – far more about a lot of things you have to do than some way you have to be. None of those things are particularly difficult – they just have to get done.

Because I realize most people don’t come from a marketing background, I devoted an entire chapter of TWFSP to developing a “marketing mindset� – minus the angst and stress. NOT book promotion – that’s most of the book – but rather grasping the fundamentals of sales and marketing to better understand book promotion. Chapter title? “Learning to Love S&M… (Sales & Marketing).� It just feels like the other sometimes…

Of course, my focus isn’t simply self-publishing. It’s profitable self-publishing. Self-publishing by itself, as a process, is obviously feasible. People do it all the time. And in most cases, they do it like clumsy, sloppy clueless amateurs. And as a result, they go nowhere, reach virtually no one, and make no money. Which is why “self-publishing� gets a bad rap – and in the overwhelming percentage of cases, that rap is well deserved.

But your self-publishing story doesn’t have to end that way. Success isn’t easy or cheap, but it’s do-able. I’ve done it and countless others have done it as well. It all starts with a plan, and that’s the whole point of TWFSP – a detailed blueprint authors can follow to write their own self-publishing success story.

Author Peter Bowerman, Mr. Well Fed Writer, is joining us for three days here on Fiction Scribe. He’ll be talking about his writing, his book, and self-publishing today.

“Writing is a career path of dubious financial prospects.�

I’ve earned a handsome living making a lie of that conventional wisdom. And I’ve done it in two writing arenas: “commercial� freelancing (writing for businesses, large and small, and for rates of $50-125+ an hour) as well as self-publishing.

My name is Peter Bowerman and I’m a commercial freelancer, speaker, business coach, and self-publishing author. In 1994, I started out as a commercial freelancer with NO writing background, experience or training; I’d never written anything for money. I was paying all my bills in less than four months, and I spent the next seven years collecting the all the how-to detail about my field.

I self-published the 2000 award-winning Book-of-the-Month Club selection, The Well-Fed Writer, and its 2005 companion volume, TWFW: Back For Seconds (both self-published; www.wellfedwriter.com). Those two books have become how-to “standards� on starting a lucrative commercial freelancing business. I then chronicled my self-publishing success (52,000 copies of my first two books in print and a full-time living for over five years) in my third book – and the focus of these blog posts – the award-winning 2007 release, The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living. www.wellfedsp.com.

Why did I write The Well-Fed Self-Publisher? Well, visit virtually any writer’s web site or read any writing publication, and chances are, you’ll see one or more articles relating to the challenges of getting published – along with tips, strategies, tricks, etc. So many authors chase it, but so few manage to get it.

I felt that for most authors, self-publishing was truly viable, and given the time and energy they’d have to invest even in a conventional publishing scenario to be successful – and all for a lousy return – didn’t it make more sense to do it yourself and keep control of the process, the timetable, the rights, and most of the money?

Given my success at creating a full-time income for five years off ONE book, I felt my story was one worth sharing. Oh, and yes, I thought I could make money! Because my formula had worked twice, it could work again (and has). Yes, that success benefits me, but it also reaffirms the fundamental validity of the book’s premises.