Recently, I happened to look at two blog posts on related themes — the ability to endlessly revise, tweak and change your published story on KDP, PubIt, etc. if you self-publish.

One posted on Dear Author was written from a reader's point of view, who basically does not like this practice at all.

Another is posted on The Passive Voice, written from the point of view of mostly writers who have self-published, whether or not they have traditional publishing experience.

I can't imagine trolling the web for reviews and endlessly tweaking and revising my books, reformatting them and re-uploading them over and over and over again. Firstly, it's unfair to ask my readers to re-read the book they've read once just because I revised it. (That's what betas and critique partners are for.) Secondly, I have other books I need to work on.

I guess in a way it's really tempting to revise when you get a lot of less-than-flattering comments on some particular aspect of your story. But that's supposed to be done before you publish and charge people money, not after.

I have, however, re-uploaded my books before, and it was due to some improvements I made in formatting, to update my bio, etc. So no, my readers don't have to re-read my books to get the latest version of the story.

And now, excuse me while I go try to progress in my work on my works in progress.

As you know, I'm not a big fan of agency pricing, library e-lending program restrictions, geo restrictions, DRM and so on. Late last month, I wrote a guest opinion for Dear Author on what the (seemingly) ideal reader is to the Big Six, and it's finally up on Dear Author.

And I'm blogging about three qualities authors need to self-publish effectively on Babbling about Books and More.

Check them out and feel free to share your thoughts!

Thanks to Nadia for having me here today!

Nadia asked me to blog about my experience as an indie author and how it's working out. In some ways it's working out great. In other ways it's definitely not easy. I'm not sure if authors who are traditionally published get a rulebook or not, but I know that indies don't.

We're expected to know the rules going in both socially and from a business angle. We're expected to know how to interact with our readers and fans, with reviewers (positive and negative), and with the online publishing world in general.

From the beginning, I've been a very opinionated indie. I'm someone who isn't afraid to speak my mind about things. Sometimes this gets me into drama. Sometimes it earns me enemies or just people who “will never read me now”. That last part sucks, since as an indie, I need readers or I won't make it. I don't have somebody else's marketing department to help push me to a wider audience. Though I realize many traditionally published authors don't have that nearly as much as they'd like or need either.

I'm on a very steep learning curve, not just in publishing, but in social interactivity… how much to market, when to stop, what lines not to cross, and which lines to cross. Sometimes being seen as controversial is a good thing. It gets me exposure I wouldn't have normally had. It gets me talked about. It ultimately gets me sales.

Sometimes the fallout isn't as good. And even when it nets me sales, it also nets me stress and drama.

So my experience has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, I really love self-publishing. I love being in control of the entire process, hiring a cover artist, picking my own editors, and telling the story I want to tell with no apologies. In romance there are a lot of formulas. Many publishers want a certain number of sex scenes occurring at certain points in the story. They want a certain heat level. They have rules about what language you can use. Etc. etc.

I didn't want to be stifled in that way, and so that's been another wonderful thing about being indie.

I've met a lot of really cool, talented, and self-possessed indie authors like Moriah Jovan, R.J. Keller, M.T. Murphy, and Kait Nolan, to name just a few. Each of them has a different way they go about being indie and slightly different goals and motivations.

I love running my own business and keeping all the profit.

I really love being a part of an indie movement in authorship that should have happened back when it became cool to be an indie musician or indie filmmaker. But it's happening now. So that's what matters.

Initially a lot of people told me not to do it, that it was some sort of career suicide. I never felt that way, since I could just start over with a new pen name if I didn't like how things went for Zoe. I didn't want the pressure of traditional publishing and deadlines and such. The irony is that I've learned a lot about myself here, including that I often create my own pressure and chaos no matter what road I'm on. And it's not something I can avoid by merely taking a different aesthetic path.

I ignored the well-meaning advice of those who told me not to go indie. I saw a future in indie authorship and particularly in ebooks. I started growing my audience and marketing my work. One of my little marketing projects is the Zoe Who? series, which is a youtube cartoon series about my self-publishing journey poking fun at the publishing industry, romance, and myself (lots of material there, LOL).

I try to be genuine, looking for that line between being genuine, and maintaining some level of emotional privacy. It seems to be overall paying off, since more people seem to be attracted to me than repelled by me.

Right now, as an indie, I live pretty naked because I talk a lot about my experiences as a writer and as an indie in particular. There are a lot of things I struggle with including “how should I present myself?”, “how should I engage?”, “when should I disengage?” that often become the topics of blog posts because I know I can't be the only author who feels this way, who feels sometimes the creative flow shuts off from too much Internet connection.

I try to form genuine connections with readers and people on Twitter, Facebook, and through blog hopping because we all want connection and if someone likes you they are more open and receptive to checking your work out. This has opened a lot of doors to helping overcome reader objections and getting my work read by an ever-widening audience.

My three novellas, Kept, Claimed, and Mated, generally hang out in the top 1,000 of the overall Kindle store, out of over 700,000 titles. I'm very proud of that, but I have a long way to go.

I'm constantly growing. This growth takes place in my writing and how I package my work. I recently had the novella covers slightly revamped by my cover artist to look more polished. (I had designed those particular covers originally.) The growth is also ongoing personally in how I handle the various emotional changes involved in putting work out there without a net or rulebook.

Hopefully my experiences help someone else who wants to do the same things.

Overall, it has been an incredibly rewarding journey and, yes, I would go indie again. And I want to stay indie forever.

You can find Zoe at:

http://www.zoewinters.org
http://zoewinters.wordpress.com
http://www.twitter.com/zoewinters

I'm sure many of you have heard that RWA has decided that Harlequin Enterprises, as a whole, is no longer a non-vanity / subsidy publishing house.

So many people seemed confused about why many writers are unhappy about the Harlequin Horizons situation. I do not believe that Harlequin Horizons is a true self-publishing house. It's really a vanity press, no matter what Harlequin calls it.

Let's look how Harlequin Horizons works — I'm going to use an example to illustrate the situation. (Judging from what's going on in the Blogsphere, using a poor new unpublished writer seems to muddy the water…)

Harlequin Horizons Scenario Explained — in layman's terms:

Let's say you're a salsa maker. Your dream is to distribute your salsa so everyone in the world can buy it from supermarkets, etc.

So you go to…Pace. Pace says, “Your salsa recipe isn't good enough to add to our Pace lineup, but you should consider taking your salsa recipe to Pace Self-Salsa. If you sell a lot under that brand, we may considering adding your salsa to our main lineup.”

So you contact Pace Self-Salsa (PSS). PSS says you have to pay them money to make and bottle and label your salsa. For every bottle of your salsa that sells, PSS gets to keep half of the profit and you get the other half. So — after paying Pace a bunch of money up front — you have to split the profits with PSS 50-50.

You decide to pay PSS because you figure you can use the Pace brand and its distribution and marketing power to sell your salsa. But later you learn that PSS has no intention of associating its Pace brand with your salsa. Pace tells you that the brand “Pace” is the “gold standard” in salsa and that it will not be “compromised” to help you sell your PSS salsa. Nor does Pace plan to allow you to use their distribution network to sell your salsa. (But you can, for an additional $12K or so, get access to the Pace mailing list. This will allow you to spam 10 million Pace customers with entreaties to try your judged-to-be-not-up-to-snuff salsa all you like. And for extra $20K, you can make a commercial video that you can upload to YouTube and other social networking sites to promote your salsa (but nothing on TV channels).) And your PSS salsa will not appear next to Pace salsa on grocery store shelves. You have to do all the legwork, etc. and you have to split any profits 50-50, even though — remember — you paid a lot of money at the start for the bottling and labeling service.

That's vanity. And, frankly, it's exploitation. There's virtually NO CHANCE that you will recoup the cost of investment (the bottling & labeling fees and so on). But PSS makes lots of money because it charges you and other salsa makers a premium for its bottling & labeling services, and it gets to keep 50% of profit made on each bottle of salsa sold. Just in case you missed it: Pace will make money up front, even if you never sell a single bottle of salsa. You, on the other hand, will need to sell a hell of a lot of salsa just to break even.

The true self-publishing model can be explained using a similar example:

Again let's say you're a salsa maker. Your dream is to distribute your salsa so everyone in the world can buy it from supermarkets, etc.

So you go to…Pace. Pace says, “Your salsa recipe isn't good enough to add to our Pace lineup.” So you decide you're going to make your own salsa company, just like Pace.

So you put in your money to bottle and label your own salsa by either contracting it out to an independent bottler or learning how to do it yourself. You study how to distribute your salsa, and you get some of your local supermarkets, etc. to carry your salsa.

People try out your salsa and buy some.

You may lose money because you can't sell enough salsa. But if you do make profit, you keep 100% of the profit.

(If you're very very successful, your salsa may become a worldwide bestseller. And who knows? Some big company (like Pace) might buy you out. Again, you assume the financial risk and you keep all the losses / profits.)

So that's the difference, ladies and gentlemen. That's why I do not consider Harlequin Horizons to be a viable option for anyone who's serious about being a career-minded writer.

Disclaimer: I like Pace salsa a lot. Pace did not pay me to use its name or to say that I like their salsa. The above are just hypothetical examples I made up.

Any questions or comments?