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Old 12-02-2020, 12:20 PM   #21
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Old 12-02-2020, 12:21 PM   #22
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Call up David Staples. He seems to have this down pat....
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Old 12-02-2020, 01:08 PM   #23
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Sounds lucrative.
I wish my weekend hobbies broke even
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Old 12-02-2020, 01:32 PM   #24
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I think you are being a little harsh. If you have ever written a book, you would probably realize that it is often harder to convince a publisher to publish your work than it is to get up the courage to write the book in the first place.

There are numerous well written and well received self published books by authors that are a long way from being sad e.g. the Wealthy Barber.

Also I think with time and the advent of modern technology it is becoming easier and more feasible to publish and promote you own work.

I think one should respect and commend those who show the courage and commitment to make public what they deem to be adding to the overall public good.
Of course it's harder. Writing a book-length story is something almost anyone can do, writing a good book-length story is something a much fewer number of people can do, and getting that first book traditionally published can be harder still.

But people who self-publish physical books, again, usually haven't put in the work. Much of it is centered around vanity projects, some of it is down to impatience, and I think most of it doesn't take the writing as seriously as the concept of the book. They want a book, and they'll pay to get it. Unless it's part of some marketing effort or collects already sought-after information in a convenient format (like some self-published non-fiction books), there's not a lot to be respected or commended about it.

With time and the advent technology, the biggest advancement is that you can publish your work anywhere – for free. You can know if it is worth something to someone, if it adds value to the conversation of whatever medium it is you're writing in, long before you ever think about "the book." You can share art with the world without having "the book," and the book, traditionally, signifies some outward acknowledgement that what you're adding is worthwhile. If you pay to have a book published, what's the point?

Blogs, magazines, journals. Plenty of ways to publish yourself or be published for free. And they all come long before you shell out money to produce something.

You look at self-publishing circles and it's a different world. It's not about the art, the story, what it adds to the conversation, etc. It's about the book. It's about selling the book. It's about writing many books and selling those books. It's desperate, to me, but it more importantly misses the point of creating the thing in the first place. What value are you adding? What point are you making? What does your art add to an already crowded space? Turn to those following the traditional route, and those are the types of conversations being had. Many people write for the sake of the writing, never caring where they're published, how often, or if a book ever comes.

It's the difference between a musician playing for the love of music, and a musician playing because he wants to be famous or because he wants to say he's a musician. You can always tell. The first person puts in the work on the music because they believe that's the purpose, the second person puts in the work on the business because they believe that's the purpose. The second one misses the point.

I personally hope indes takes the first route. Work on the writing, take it seriously, and focus on that. Don't worry about "the book." If the book comes, and it may after many months or years, it comes. If it doesn't then it doesn't. Share the work on a blog, send it to magazines, go to readings, etc.

There's nothing wrong with writing for the love of writing and sharing it wherever you can share it. But paying for it is foolish.
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Old 12-02-2020, 02:07 PM   #25
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A couple of my wife's favorite authors of books for children, while teaching grade 2 (age 7 and 8), were Bill Peet and Roald Dahl. You may want to have a look at some of their work.

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Old 12-02-2020, 02:15 PM   #26
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I completely agree with this, which is why we didn’t go down this path. Just sharing what I’ve discovered. The artists themselves get pretty frustrated when they see this as it is essentially sewering their rates.
Good to hear.

You should share a link to your book. It's Christmas season and most of us are trying to shop local. Can't get more local for books than a CP author.
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Old 12-02-2020, 02:55 PM   #27
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Good to hear.

You should share a link to your book. It's Christmas season and most of us are trying to shop local. Can't get more local for books than a CP author.

Shameless plug:

https://www.amazon.ca/Avocados-Spoon...199X/ref=nodl_

This is a family project to take something our kids love singing and see it come to life. Super valuable for the kids learning and we hope to do it again.
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Old 12-02-2020, 06:15 PM   #28
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Thanks for the thoughts everyone!

I've always been an avid reader and love writing. I've been musing about starting a thriller novel series for the last couple of years. I thought maybe I could get my feet wet with some children's books and see how much I actually enjoy it, before I set myself up for failure with a 300 page novel.
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Old 12-02-2020, 07:45 PM   #29
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Thanks for the thoughts everyone!

I've always been an avid reader and love writing. I've been musing about starting a thriller novel series for the last couple of years. I thought maybe I could get my feet wet with some children's books and see how much I actually enjoy it, before I set myself up for failure with a 300 page novel.
I've published a number of pieces of writing professionally (but only non-fiction articles, never a book).

I'd caution that a children's book probably isn't a stepping stone to writing an adult novel. It's really quite a different thing.

If you want to write a thriller novel I would do the following.Write some adult short stories, and have them read by critical readers. Edit and improve them. Go to writers workshops. Put them out there (online, anthology, blog, whatever) and see how they are received.

In the process of all that you should end up having fans and contacts in the publishing world in your genre. Then write a novel.
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Old 12-03-2020, 09:20 AM   #30
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go light on the swearing and graphic sexual content
The night Max wore his latex suit and made mischief of one kind and another . . .
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Old 12-03-2020, 01:20 PM   #31
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I've published a number of pieces of writing professionally (but only non-fiction articles, never a book).

I'd caution that a children's book probably isn't a stepping stone to writing an adult novel. It's really quite a different thing.

If you want to write a thriller novel I would do the following.Write some adult short stories, and have them read by critical readers. Edit and improve them. Go to writers workshops. Put them out there (online, anthology, blog, whatever) and see how they are received.

In the process of all that you should end up having fans and contacts in the publishing world in your genre. Then write a novel.
This is fantastic advice. And, as a bonus, by starting with some short stories, you may end up with the foundation for the novel you want to write.

Calgary is kind of a rough market for writers, but if you can ingrain yourself in part of the community, it's very supportive. And once you get some momentum under you, you start to naturally fit into the Canadian lit landscape as a whole, which is also very supportive. Canadians support Canadians pretty well.
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Old 12-03-2020, 04:46 PM   #32
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Old 12-04-2020, 06:39 AM   #33
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Shameless plug:

https://www.amazon.ca/Avocados-Spoon...199X/ref=nodl_

This is a family project to take something our kids love singing and see it come to life. Super valuable for the kids learning and we hope to do it again.
My kids are too old now but I picked up a copy for my neighbours who had a baby in the summer.
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Old 12-04-2020, 07:36 AM   #34
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My kids are too old now but I picked up a copy for my neighbours who had a baby in the summer.

You’re too kind. Appreciate the support.

When you sell an obscure Children’s book like ours one little sale can jump you miles on the best sellers rank. Pretty cool to watch, and say “we’re the 5046th best seller in children’s performing arts fiction”
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Old 12-04-2023, 09:34 AM   #35
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We just wrote a children’s book this year. Worked with a publisher. Since we have no artistic talent we hired an artist and had the choice to pay a fixed fee and keep all the royalties, or pay a portion from each sale. We paid a fixed fee through our publisher. If you’re self publishing there’s a Facebook group with super desperate artists that are working for cheap (like less than minimum wage cheap when you factor in how long it probably takes). (Edit: not meant to imply to do this, as mentioned below it’s a poor practice and we used a recommended artist at their rates. Also a caution lots have shown stories of people finding the cheapest artist only to discover plagiarized work) We also had to order a set amount of books at a fixed fee, to get our ISBN.

All in all we probably were into it for about $1000.

We’ve used this first book as a way to understand the process. Have another book in mind we’d like to complete, but still figuring out some more stuff.

The route we chose is very difficult to make any money in Canada. Our book sells for $11.99 in the US, which is about the most you can realistically charge. To do the equivalent in CAD the price point becomes too high. We were able to get Amazon to force the cad price lower than equivalent, but that eats into the very tight margin. Still have not conquered indigo, they seem to have a different listing system than the standard one the US publisher uses. (Our book is all over the US outlets, Walmart.com; Barnes and noble, Amazon, etc.)

Our book is a simple song we made up with the kids, which we really wanted to produce as a board book. But you’ll find out that you can’t print board books unless you order massive quantities, and then you can print in China.

We might break even one day. I’d like to do the process again now that we’ve done it once. The key to doing this without losing money is to be able to sell the batch of books you order direct as an author. With the right price point you could cover your costs from those sales, and anything else would be net positive. We never got our books due to covid cancelling a trip of ours to the US and they are sitting at a friends house. Originally we were going to go to some community type trade shows with the kids to teach them some business skills; and have fun together. Again covid or
Bit of a Christmas CP bump for Ace - how's it going 3 yrs later with this project?

How did the OPer Indes make out, 3 yrs later?

(I found this thread after a search to see if any CPers had asked about book publishing and any shared experiences. Some informative posts in this thread.)
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