Financial Incentives: What Can a Self-Published Author Expect to Make?

In a perfect world, we'd all only work for fun. My day job is awesome (I mean, as far as having great stories, it can't be beat), but if I didn't have to work to pay my mortgage, I bet I'd only be part time. I'd also love to be able to write as a career.

Because who doesn't want more time for this?!

Now, I realize that the level of fun probably drops substantially when you're writing to feed your family rather than writing in your spare time and only when you want to/feel inspired, but its a dream job for a lot of us.

Realistically then, what can you expect to make? Beverly Kendall did a comprehensive self publishing survey and posted the results (complete with full color charts!) at her blog. Her conclusions may surprise you! Click here to check it out!

Enduring the Wait

My face when I realize I have to wait.

Apparently, there’s a good bit of waiting that goes along with trying to publish (even self-publish) a book. I had no idea it would be like this: trying to be patient while anticipating a dream coming true. 

Right now, there’s the waiting for the illustrations to be completed.

Then, there will be the waiting for the first print(s) to come off the press and back to my hot little hands.

Then it will be waiting to meet with local bookstore owners. 

I’m sure there are other waiting things I haven’t even considered yet. 

I hate waiting. I don’t like lines, being on hold, the 15 minutes before my work day ends, the last three days before a vacation, or the yawning expanse of time while a jury deliberates (work related, I promise). 

I’m a do-er, not a bystander. I always get into the thick of things, not because the thick of things is necessary the best place to be, but at least I’m not waiting for things to be done on their own. I’m influencing them. Its why I do what I do for work, its why I always have half a dozen projects going on at once (so if one stalls up for some reason, I can jump to another during the waiting period without any break in the action), its why I love volunteering with kids (they don’t like waiting either), and its why I’m fairly certain I have ADD. 

Some people are good at this. They're so patient and cheerful about things taking FOR.EV.ER. I want to be more like that and less like a squirrel on crack when I'm expecting something. 

How do you stand it? No, really, I need some advice here. Please help me!

Brilliant Ideas: When Does “Unique” Become "Too Weird"?

Occasionally I have what I just KNOW to be a brilliant idea. In a flurry of excited, disjointed sentences, I blurt out my thrillingly awesome thought, only to have my patient, loving husband kindly pull me back into reality before my head explodes with sheer cleverness.

He’s probably just jealous.

Or maybe selling everything we own and moving into a yurt in the mountains of Montana in the middle of January wasn’t a great idea (but people, A YURT!). 

If you’ve been following along, you know that I'm working on self-publishing a children's book. I was thinking, it might add an interesting visual element if I have some kids I know write out the story and I use my words in their handwriting for the narrative.

Unfortunately, my husband is currently out of town on a family emergency, so I need your input: is this a good or bad idea? Why?

Finding Inspiration: What Has Inspired Your Writing?

My children’s book that I am working on publishing, The Clumsy Princess, is really a story about my friend’s little girl, who we’ll call “L.” L is a sweet, stubborn, adorably fierce and fearless 2 year old. After L spent another afternoon in the Emergency Room, this time for taking a header off of an older sibling’s top bunk (nothing had to be casted that day, thankfully!), I referred to her as an “accident-prone princess.”

                                           The face of fearlessness!

I thought about how Disney princesses appear so perfect: graceful, beautiful, well-dressed, and well-spoken. Their whole goal in life is to find their true love and live happily (and richly) ever after.

What if, instead of presenting our girls with an impossible standard to achieve, we created princesses who were more like real people?  What if we stopped subtly telling them that their goal should be to find a man to "rescue" them, but instead encouraged them to celebrate their differences and embrace life?

What if there were stories about clumsy princesses, and shy princesses, and bossy princesses, and tomboy princesses? 

Those are the kind of princesses I want my daughters (should I have any) to enjoy; princesses who are flawed, and wonderful because of it. The idea for a book series was born!

Please share! I want to know, where do you get your inspiration? 

 

The Question: Can an Unknown Author Succeed with Self-Publishing?

I wrote a children’s book. It’s a simple, light, amusing story about an accident-prone princess (because who needs another perfect Disney princess, am I right?), aimed at the 3-8 year old demographic. And if you google “publishing a children’s book”, it’s got a better chance of being the third monkey on Noah’s Ark than it does of ever being read by anyone other than my mom.

So this is my experiment: can I, an unknown, unpublished author, succeed where all signs point to success being impossible? And, what more can I do it without breaking the bank?

I have some obstacles: I work at least 40 hours a week and on my days off, I watch some pretty awesome little princesses, so my time is fairly limited. I work in public service, so my finances are not unlimited. Writing short, fun kids’ stories is my forte, but I’m a dismal artist, so I’d have to hire someone to illustrate for me. And that’s only the biggest issues I can see, from the starting line.  

Never one to let the obvious hurdles get in my way, I’m hopeful this can be done. With this blog, I hope to sketch out a rough map of what to do (or not to do) in this very unscientific experiment!