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August 1 question – What pitfalls would you warn other writers to avoid on their publication journey?

Oh, this one is going to be rich since I haven’t actually published anything yet.

I’m going to be looking at things from a self-publishing angle, so if that isn’t your cup of tea, you can skip this entry. I don’t mind.

 

My first trilogy that I ever wrote was… well, it was DOA to put it nicely. It lives on in my files and it plays organ donor from time to time for ideas and such.

Pitfall 1 – Accept that not everything you write is perfect.  Polish and learn your craft and polish again and be willing to look with a very critical eye at your own work. You may discover it needs more work, you may discover there is no saving it, you may have to put it away to look at another time.

The second series I started (and third and fourth and there are ideas for 6 and 7 and maybe an 8th came out hard and fast – sorta. I’m a pantser with a family who doesn’t give a damn about my schedule, so making word count goals doesn’t always work for me. Neither does plotting or outlining. This means I have a lot of problems making writing date goals.

Pitfall 2 – Write the WHOLE SERIES first unless you are confident that you can bang out one book a year. Readers want to know that they aren’t going to get involved in a series and then have it suddenly disappear or the author makes them wait FOREVER to get the next installment.

A few years back I saw a rash of authors yanking their book 1 self-pubs off sale, reworking the story so that it consistently fit with what they wanted to work in to book 2 (or 3 or whatever) and then putting it back up.

Pitfall 3 – Don’t be that dickish kind of author. It irritates the hell out of your readers. Plot your series and world out in advance or write the whole series first but don’t yank a book out of a series and rework it because of your fabulous idea for a later book in the same world. It looks unprofessional when you do that. Save your idea for another story. Trust me, if you keep writing, that idea will come in handy.

There are a lot more things I can think about warning you of:

– Own your own ISBN. The ‘Zon or any other publishing platform that gives you an ISBN can change their TOS at any given time, and often do, without notice.  Make sure that you LEGALLY own every little bit of your book that you can so the TOS doesn’t someday bite you in the ass.

– ALWAYS READ THE TOS. Yes, I know it’s eye-crossingly dull and some even take HOURS to read and understand, and yes, I’m still training myself to do this, but if you don’t, you might find out later that you gave away the rights to your world, or distribution, or licensing for tchotchkes or some other thing and screaming “I didn’t know” won’t buy you much in the world of law if it was in the TOS that YOU DIDN’T READ.

-Take classes for running a small business.

-Read up on the writing world of business.

-Don’t read your Reviews. Ever.

-Learn to tell pompous blowhards like myself to sod off.

I’m certain there are more out there that I don’t know about or that my future experience will learn is quite so as according to my beliefs now, but I think that’s do from my fount of questionable knowledge.

 

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