On publishing in 2023, platforms, and audiences
Update Posted: 1,734 words
I’ve written a book (finally). Now what?
Where we’ve come from
I first blogged about Currahee (then All Right) in 2016 and have written four drafts since then. Technically, the story first evolved from a short story I posted all the way back in 2012, now 11 years ago.
Currahee is a weird book. Because it’s taken so long to create, it’s really grown up with me, and I see my own development in the long and varied milestones of the book. In 2021, I finished the third draft which fully manifested the mythological plot devices I’d added, and sent it off to four beta readers for their opinions.
As I read the book and my feedback trickled in, I realized that the 50/50 structure of the book (the first half entirely in Jacob’s voice, and the second entirely in Jessica’s) didn’t work at all. We got halfway through the story with Jacob, then backed up to the beginning with Jessica, rehashed what we’d already gone through, now at double speed, and then finished the story with what I can only describe as a rushed ending.
So I took it back in for more revisions. My friend Andrew was an invaluable companion, and our weekly writing nights throughout 2022 kept me working on the story: most importantly, working on the plot.
I had to kill not just one but four of my favorite chapters, a classic fish-out-of-water scenario for Jacob that just detracted from the overall plot: even though it culminated in possibly my favorite single scene I’ve ever written for any book ever. I don’t know, I may have to come back to that one in a short story sometime.
I pushed and prodded and whipped the story into shape. My initial instinct of alternating POV chapters proved to be solid, and Jacob and Jessica tell the story together, taking turns throughout the book. This gives much more room for the ending to breathe, and lets us drop some revelations in Jessica’s chapters that were previously stuck all the way in the second half of the book.
It feels a little unbelievable that it’s taken this long to produce something that’s mostly finished. At the moment, I’m doing a line-by-line edit of each chapter, and reading the book aloud to a small circle of family on Marco Polo for the purposes of hearing out the dialog and making sure it all rings true to life.
How to publish a book in 7,932 easy steps
Now that I’ve gotten closer and closer to “true” completion of the novel, the question comes up: how the heck am I going to publish this thing?
At first, I strongly considered traditional publishing. I want the validation of being 1) a real author with 2) a real audience and a 3) finished book that’s executed to a high-quality standard. I assumed that ‘real’ publishing was the way to see that through.
A pretty influential turning point for me was this post by Baldur Bjarnason, “Some thoughts on how to make a book.” This didn’t exactly raise any new points, but it continued to point me in a different direction than I had been leaning before. Specifically:
‘Quality’, for lack of a better word, has deteriorated for large parts of the trade publishing industry. Print and typesetting quality has declined for many titles that have been switched to Print-On-Demand. Publishers keep cutting back on their investment in editing. They are exceptionally bad at marketing and actually selling their wares.
Baldur Bjarnason, “Some Thoughts on how to make a book”
I also began to chase the rabbit trail of presenting an ebook on the web. Specifically, Robin Sloan’s Perfect Edition project got me considering the idea of presenting a novel on the web. It’s a natural intersection of my work expertise and my personal passions, and the idea of controlling the end-to-end experience of an ebook on the web was deeply appealing to me.
As I considered the different formats I could produce: print, audio, and ebook, I began to get excited about creating and designing the actual products that make up this novel. I realized that perhaps I could bring a lot of passion to this process that would be missing from a traditional publisher planning to publish a first-time author.
So why self-publishing?
At the end of the day, this is my book. Self-publishing grants me end-to-end control of the product and presentation: web, ebook, print, and audio. This addresses point 3) in my sentence up above about traditional publishing. We’re not talking Amazon Kindle Publishing here — in fact, avoiding Amazon is one of my greatest desires behind self-publishing. I don’t care to work in the established system because the established system does a terrible job of connecting readers and authors (See Brandon Sanderson’s recently wildly successful Kickstarter for an example of how established authors are already bypassing the traditional gatekeepers in the industry).
Second, I believe that I can exercise more care for the published work than a publishing house would give a first-time author (covers point 1). The question then becomes whether or not I can produce a book interior, a book cover, an audio recording, and an ebook template to the same standards as a traditional publisher.
This leaves point 2) in my sentence up above: an audience. Currently I’m reading the book aloud to my family. They are a built in audience. But how do I go about getting this book in the hands of people who may enjoy it?
Building a Platform Audience
I despise much of the usual platform-building on the web today. It’s vacuous, promotes ‘content’ over thoughtful, valuable writing, and is inextricably tied to making money (I don’t give a rip about making money on this book). I’m not interested in content milling or paying bots to ‘engage’ with my social media posts. The more time goes on, the more I’m convinced that most of the modern web is actually a dead-end, as far as connecting people goes.
This was the final nail in the decision-making process around publishing. Simply put, I’m willing to do this entire thing as a passion project. Consequently, it doesn’t actually matter how good a job I do of ‘marketing’ this book. That said, as an author I’d love the opportunity to get it in the hands of people who will enjoy the story.
What better way for a brand-new author to do so than by making the book available, for free, in a maximally usable interface on the web?
Is this even possible in 2023? We’re about to find out.
The Plan
So here’s the plan.
This summer, once I’ve finished revisions and copyrighted the text of the novel with the Library of Congress, the free web version of Currahee will launch on this very website. I recognize that reading a book on the web isn’t the ideal way to read, but I’m hoping that putting this completely free sample out into the world will earn some goodwill with readers who have never heard of me before.
Second, I’ll work to release audiobook and epub versions of the novel. These will be recorded/produced by me, and made for sale directly on this website, with no middlemen. This will let me cut out a large number of fees, and will ensure that all of my audience’s dollars go directly towards creating more work.
Finally, using some of the proceeds of the digital sales, I plan to produce a 500-book print run of Currahee for distribution. Again, I’ll sell this directly on my website.
According to the plan, each phase of this process will build up a little more audience. The free version will cast the widest net. From there, I’m confident there are people who enjoy the book enough that they’d like to own a digital copy for rereading, especially with the knowledge that purchasing the digital copy will enable a physical copy to exist. Finally, I’ll produce a small print run of the physical copy: for myself and anyone else who just wants a handsome copy of this book to exist on their bookshelf.
I may do some legwork with local bookstores and other points of interest. Tallulah Gorge, GA is a big plot point in the novel, so I’d love to talk the state park gift shop into carrying a half dozen copies. The local college sells ‘local interest’ books in their bookstore, could I talk them into carrying a few. Even Barnes and Noble is now all about giving individual booksellers decision-making powers over what books they carry. Could I talk a Georgia Barnes and Noble into carrying a novel about Georgia? What about a Kansas City Barnes and Noble into carrying a book by a local author. Is any this possible? No idea.
No Amazon, no print-on-demand, no massive Kindle marketplace, no traditional funnels of platform-building. No new funnels for platform building either. Substack is cool, but why do I need them to publish writing on the web, again? The whole point of the web was unlocking publishing for the masses. I’m enough of an idealist that I’m going to to try to put my money where my mouth is.
No walled gardens. I really don’t know that this is possible, so that’s why this is an experiment.
Regardless of how well this goes, this is the correct path for Currahee. My next novel won’t take 12 years. It won’t be so baked into me that I obsess over it to nearly this level. For Currahee, this is the only remaining path forward, and I can only describe this as a passion project.
If the experiment goes well, I have another novel in this same world already in progress. I’d love to publish it the same way. Beyond that, I have two more story ideas. Perhaps Currahee does moderately well and a ‘real’ publisher wants to pick up the book and any sequels for distribution. In that scenario, this experiment is to prove that there’s an audience for this book(s) out there. Perhaps I get stuck with 496 print copies in my basement for the rest of time. In that scenario, well, at least I’ll have the copy of Currahee on my bookshelf that I always wanted.
Really, it’s your decision.
Image source: me, last week in southern MO, borrowing a much nicer camera than I usually have access to.