Can you give us a brief overview of
your latest book?
My
latest book is called "He has come back to me…" and is a
bumper edition of two interlinked science fiction short stories which were
previously published separately in magazines. "He has come back to me…"
explores the difficult relationship between two sisters who saw an UFO land
near their childhood home when they were children. The second story in the
collection, Contact Renewed, picks up some thirty years later, when the
younger of the two sisters is working at a SETI type "search for alien
life" project and struggles with trying to remember whether her childhood
close encounter was real or not.
Did you try the traditional route to
publishing, i.e. querying agents/publishers?
I sold several short stories, non-fiction articles and poems to
traditional magazines. A bit later I finished my first novel. I didn't
particularly like the idea of getting an agent and giving them 15 percent of
all my writing income, so I decided not to get an agent unless I found that I
absolutely needed one. Hence I decided to submit my novel to those publishers
that accepted unagented submissions first. In the end, the novel was submitted
to exactly one publisher who rejected it. Then my MA thesis took over my brain
and I stopped sending out queries.
Do you belong to a critique group? Have
they helped improve your writing?
I
don't belong to a critique group in the traditional sense. Partly this is for
purely logistical reasons. I live in Germany and write in English, so potential
critique partners and groups are few and far between.
However,
I was lucky to attend one of the very few universities in Germany that offered
creative writing classes in English. I attended every English language creative
writing class I could. Those classes were very helpful, probably because we had
an excellent teacher. The other writers in the class were very different from
me. They wrote mostly minimalist literary flash fiction and poetry, whereas I
wrote longer genre fiction. Nonetheless, these creative writing classes grew
into an English language writing group over time. We even have our own
magazine. Several members eventually found publishing success, mostly in
traditional small press publishing, though one is a bestselling non fiction
author here in Germany.
I
have less contact with the old group now that most of us have left university.
But I still see them from time to time. And when I need a beta reader or a
second opinion, I know a bunch of people I can ask.
What factors influenced your decision
to self-publish to Amazon?
I
saw that more and more authors I respect started self-publishing. Besides, I
read the blogs of Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith and what they
said about self-publishing made sense.
I
had several out of print backlist short stories and novelettes not to mention
works that never sold, all of which were gathering the proverbial dust on my
hard drive. So I decided to take some of those backlist stories and give
self-publishing a try. I found that I enjoyed the process and the freedom
self-publishing gave me, so I put up more backlist stories and novelettes as
well as stories that never sold and brand new work.
So
far I have 14 e-books in a variety of genres available, mostly standalone short
stories and novelettes but also a flash fiction collection and a bumper edition
of two interconnected short stories.
Did you hire an editor to review your
manuscript before publishing?
Most
of my e-books so far are republished backlist short stories and novelettes. And
since those stories were originally published in various small press magazines,
they already went through the editing process. As for new stories that have
never been published before, I use beta readers, but I so far haven't hired a
professional editor. Though I will probably hire one when I finally publish my
first completed novel later this year.
What have you learned during your
self-publishing journey?
First
of all, I've learned that self-publishing is a lot of fun. It's also easier
than I thought, though of course there is a learning curve at first regarding
cover design, formatting, uploading, the requirements of the different sites,
etc… But once you get the hang of it, it's really easy. Besides, self-publishing
has taught me a lot of new skills. Thanks to self-publishing, I've become a
better copyeditor. My HTML skills have become considerably less rusty. And
since I design my own covers, I've also gotten much better at Photoshop. For
the cover of "He has come back to me…" I designed a UFO from
scratch in Photoshop and inserted it into a photo. I couldn't have done that
six months ago.
But
the best thing of all is the freedom self-publishing gives me. Before I started
self-publishing, I would evaluate every single story idea according to whether
there was a market for it and whether I could sell it. If the answer was
"No", the story remained unwritten, unless the urge to write it was
so overwhelming that the idea just wouldn't let go. But now that I'm self-publishing
any story idea or length (try selling a novella in the traditional publishing
world) is viable, because I can make my own niche.
Besides Amazon, are there any other
sites where your books are for sale?
You
can also find my books at OmniLit/AllRomance ebooks, DriveThruFiction
and XinXii with more sites coming soon.
What kinds of marketing [twitter,
facebook, blog, forums] are you involved with for promoting your book(s)?
I
have a personal website and blog, which I update almost daily, as well as a
publisher blog, which I update about once a week. On my personal blog I talk
about whatever moves me, not just writing, while the publisher blog focuses on
writing and publishing.
I
also participate in some forums where both writers and readers congregate,
comment on other people's blogs and occasionally do a guest blog or an
interview like this one.
I
even have two book trailers which I made with xtranormal, a cool website
which lets you make short movies with CGI characters that speak whatever
dialogue you write for them. I don't know if those trailers sell books, but
they were a lot of fun to make.
I
don't do Facebook, because I have issues with their privacy policy. Besides,
I'm a teacher in real life and having a Facebook account would put me in an awkward
position, if one of my students tried to friend me. I don't do Twitter either,
because I don't like it.
Do you find it difficult to juggle your
time between marketing your current book and writing your next book?
Not
really. Most of the "marketing things" I do, whether it's blogging,
commenting on other people's blogs, participating on forums, are things I was
doing before I started self-publishing and which I would do anyway, because I
enjoy them.
In
my opinion it's very important to set aside time for writing. Because if you
don't set aside time for writing, you don't have anything to promote. I do
subscribe to the belief that the best marketing is writing and publishing the
next book, so it is absolutely crucial to make time for writing.
What advice would you give a new author
just entering into the self-publishing arena?
Take
the time to read the relevant blogs and evaluate all information. Take
everything you find with a grain of salt, because what worked for Joe Konrath,
John Locke or Dean Wesley Smith may not necessarily work for you. There's a bit
of a learning curve, but don't be intimidated by this, because it's not nearly
as hard as it looks and it gets easier with every book. Try to make your
e-books as good as you possibly can, but don't worry if everything isn't
perfect right out of the gate, cause e-books have the huge advantage that you
can always fix typos and formatting issues, change the cover and the blurb, etc…
Don't rush anything, cause e-books are potentially forever and the e-book
you're publishing now will still be earning you money five or ten or twenty
years from now.
And
most importantly of all, don't forget to have fun!
What’s next for you?
Well,
there's Wed on the Scaffold, a brand new historical novelette set in 16th
century Germany, because historical fiction still seems to sell best for me.
There'll also be more backlist reprints in the future, including a collection
of short crime fiction and one of short stories set on airplanes. There'll be
more adventures of the Silencer, a masked avenger in the tradition of the pulp
magazine heroes of the 1930s. And I'll finally get around to publishing Colfrith,
a Steampunk regency romance and my first completed novel, that never sold way
back when.
4 of 5 stars
