It’s a start. An all new, start to finish, look at a new business. A huge undertaking for someone as anti-techie as I am. But I’ll give it a go.
A new business isn’t the problem. Shoot, I’ve started ten or twelve new business in the past fifty years. No, it’s not the new business. It’s the entirely new direction I’ve headed. An author. A brand new, baby fresh, without the baby fresh face, author, and it’s awesome. Time consuming, brain fargling, frustrating and ego busting, but awesome.
As a new author, I figured there would be lots of writing, which there is, but then there’s the rewriting, editing, manuscript editing (just to make sure someone else can follow what I was thinking), another rewrite (three or four more times), edit, corrections from the edit, proof read and formatting. And that only if you decide not to look for an agent and publisher.
To overcome the last two pieces of the puzzle, I chose to self publish, and for several good reasons. The first was, of the several attempts I made at doing a pitch, they weren’t what I would call my most professional moments. Oh, I’ve stood in front of plenty of students, employees and committees, giving classes, lectures and demonstrations. I’ve sung in front of crowds and led discussions, but a pitch to an agent or publisher was just a we bit different. It felt like being back in high school, giving a speech in front of the student body, then forgetting the words partway through. Not my best day, but I survived. The pitches too. I was even told I did a professional job, although I figured they were just being nice. It might even have helped if I chose the correct agent, three times.
So that was one reason. Two, was the time it takes to get any manuscript looked at, whether or not it gets accepted. I’m not twenty something anymore. Not even close. I do come from good stock however, so I don’t plan on kicking off in the next few months. My mom is still going, and she’s only 98. I had a great uncle we went to visit on his one hundredth birthday. When we drove into the drive way, we almost hit him as he was running around catching the chickens that got out. Still agile enough to catch chickens, and I didn’t catch a single one. Anyway, putting that aside, it was the amount of time it takes to get the manuscripts accepted, looked at reviewed and rewritten. Months, if you’re lucky. When I self publish, half of that time is stripped out. Oh, there’s plenty enough to do to make me wish someone else was doing what I’m doing, since I don’t have someone else doing it, but at least it’s up to me.
Now, the business owner part. Being an experienced business owner, I’m used to plowing through things I almost understand, like taxes and more taxes, and employee paperwork, and lots of legal documents. Maybe I should have taken a few more minutes and rethought my great plan, but I didn’t. Nope, now, I am not only an author, I own a publishing company. One I plan to use to help other wanna be authors get their work published. Maybe I’ll turn out just as difficult to work with as the others in the field, but maybe not. Having developed multiple businesses from the ground up, I have a pretty good idea what it takes. I even got some schooling to be a publisher. A diploma and everything.
Last week, I published my first book, Stone. The second is coming in a few months. So stick with me. Try my writing, which is a lot like this rambling, but hopefully better, and we’ll see where this goes. Answer my blog, and ramble with my rambles. It may go nowhere, but at least we’ll have some fun.
Strider