I Have My First Published Book, Now What?

Image

(Createspace actually did a great job putting the book together, it has a really smooth cover and it only took FIVE days to get to me and I didn't pay for faster shipping so overall quite pleased with this site)

There it is. I have my very own copy of Ellis Island. Honestly, I'm so...I don't even know how to put it into words. It is surreal to see it in real life book form and to know I made it happen. That photo is clearly from my snapchat (@saeglopur - comment your snapchat & I will follow you). I posted it early today and all my friends started flipping out and want a copy.

I don't want them to have a copy.

I didn't do this to sell my book. Really. I didn't. I finished Ellis Island last year and sent it to a bunch of publishing houses and tried to get myself represented but then I realized, this is not the book I want to start my career off of.

I started writing Ellis Island when I was in ninth grade. And at the time, I felt so accomplished. So proud. I thought this was the greatest thing I ever wrote. And there are a lot of great things about this book. But there are also a lot of things that make it pretty damn terrible.

I can appreciate it for what it is - a depiction of my growth as a writer. The beginning of this book is rough, even with all my editing the writing clearly matures as it gets towards the end. There are factual discrepancies, not to mention how cliche it is to have a student and teacher date. I don't regret these choices, and I wouldn't change the plot to make it more believable. I love this story, I love the characters, but I don't believe it reflects the writer I'm trying to be, and how I want to be viewed in the publishing world.

But nobody gets that. I got into multiple arguments with people who want to read it, who want me to promote the shit out of this book and I'm like I didn't do this for fame or money or anything but myself. I worked so hard writing this book, telling this story. I deserved to have a copy of this book because of all that work. I did this so I'd always remember how proud I felt for writing it, and as a reminder to keep writing that one day I'll publish a book and it'll *fingers crossed* make it onto the New York Time's Best Seller list.

I published this through createspace. I think it's a really good alternative to finding a publisher and going that route. It only cost me about $15 bucks to get my own copy, since I didn't pay for the royalties or whatever. I think that if you guys have work that is completed you should consider getting yourself a bound copy. It's really heart warming to hold your own book in your hands and know that it's yours, even if you aren't trying to sell it.

At this time, you can buy Ellis Island as a book from createspace here or you can buy the ebook from amazon here and I think you might be able to get it in paperback form as well.

I am in NO WAY saying buy my book. It's not like a BOOK you know. Like I edited it. I formatted the actual book and chose the cover for it. It's not professionally done. While I think the quality of the book is pretty much the same as buying one from Barnes and Noble like size and binding wise, it's not as nicely formatted inside as a normal book would be. While I am so thankful and appreciative to those who have purchased my book, like you guys are so supportive and I love that, I'm not going to blow smoke and say this is something you should go buy.

So my second thing I wanted to say was how does one move from online writing to working on novels for publishing? I tried to leave mibba before and focus on my novel-writing (that sounds counter-whatever because mibba is a writing site but you feels me?). It's hard to walk away from this site. it's hard to write something that no one else can see and you basically have to be your own editor, supporter, cheerleader etc throughout the whole process. I commend published writers who manage to do that. Part of my writing process is finding my face claims, and creating a layout. I can't imagine a writing a book and not having those aspects.

And all my ideas for novels turn into stories on mibba. Like how do I decide that this is the book, like THE book, the one I want to see in bookstores? It's a lot to think about and a big decision to make. I imagine once I figure out what that book will be I'll have to stop writing all my side stories. And I'd probably pitch it to agents and publishing houses while I'm writing it so it'd just be a lot of work that I'd have to put mibba on the back burner. Am I ready to move on from this site though?

Totally unrelated, but you guys I'm obsessed with Kanye's album. I feel like this is a controversial thing to say because so many people feel some type of way about him but to me he's an entertainer and he displays that in every way so I don't hate him because I don't think I know him to hate him. But besides the point, his album is my life. I've been working out to it every day and every song is lit. (Whenever I use modern slang I always feel like I'm using it wrong I'm not hip enough for it lol)

Why are my blogs always so long? My brother says I talk too much and take too long to get to the point of the story. Maybe that's because I'm a writer?
April 8th, 2016 at 06:33am