'You don't have to wait to be "accepted" by a publisher or agent to become a Millionaire Author and live a glamorous life traveling, living near celebrities in Hollywood and California, and being able to be hired to speak all over the world. I did it without being traditionally published, and it is the greatest feeling in the world to have that freedom’
Kailin Gow.
‘Self-publishing and book marketing have to be considered as an integrated project. That is what this book does; it treats publishing and marketing together as a unified project.’
Hank Quense.
‘Once, if you told people you were self-published, they'd look at you like you were a smelly old jobless hobo just come off a dusty boxcar with soup can shoes and a hat made from a coyote skull.’
Chuck Wendig.
‘Sometimes wandering the indirect path is exactly what’s required to get where we need to go.’
S.K. Quinn.
“Only a fool writes for anything but money,’ Samuel Johnson wrote in the 18th century. If that's true, and it probably is, I've been a fool more times than I care to count. I will say that I've been a much happier fool when I'm writing what I love to write. Here's the rough-and-tumble fact of it: The overwhelming odds are that when you're writing your first book (and even your second) you will be writing it for free, you will not receive a contract or advance from a major publisher, and you will not get an agent. I say this with utmost affection and empathy. I also say, let the statistical truth of all that, free us to write what we love, what we want to write, exactly what we would write for free. And once you're dancing down that path, write hard, write the thing the best you can write it, and who knows? Maybe the phone ringing on your bedside table is that literary agent and they're calling with good news. Best of all they're calling because they love your work as much as you do. And if that call doesn't come through, not right away, where does that leave you? With no regrets. All respect to Dr. Johnson, [but] the far, far better quote (for my ‘money’) is: ‘Never for money, always for love...’ Talking Heads. They didn't just write it. They sang it.’
Ruuf Wengerson.
‘It’s all about the book. It’s not a reflection of your competence. But, please ask for help from the right people. Hire the right people. Approach experts. Friends are great for moral support, but when you need expertise and advise, then ask the experts.
Otherwise, you’d be a blind man being guided by another blind man telling you which way to go. A practice that is too common in this industry.’
Eevie Lancaster.
‘First they told me: “build a following and the industry will follow.”
So I spent my entire 20s building a following on zero budget, getting by on donations.
Then they told me: “You need a literary agent. But a literary agent wants to see you have a following and something big going on.”
So I started my own small press and self-published 5 books and spent day and night connecting with my people until I’d sold over 35,000 copies in 35 different countries
and now they tell me: “no agent wants to work with a self-published author.”
Sometimes I feel like I was doomed from the very start, the very day I eat my food on that plane to London 12 years ago. Like the whole world keeps saying “you can fight all you want but we won’t let you in.”
But I do have freedom and I do have my following and I have vulnerable souls writing to me on Friday nights, about loss and hope and how my books or music or words played a small part in something they went through and sometimes I think I would throw all that away just to have a literary agent and a management and the contracts and headlines… because I’m tired.. of always fighting uphill but then I get that message, on a Monday night, and I take my computer to a bar close to where I live in Berlin, high above the city, and I write like never before because I have my people and vulnerable souls to find and I have so many books in me and time is not endless, time is crucial, and lately I’ve felt it running out, some nights, so I’m writing another book that won’t be noticed by the agents but I have my people and that’s all I will care about from now on. My people and my freedom, with time running out. That’s what I will focus on.”
Charlotte Eriksson.
‘Self-publishing isn’t for authors who couldn't be published. It's for authors who could.’ Roz Morris.
‘There are as many ways to self-publish as there are to skin a cat. Thankfully, self-publishing isn't as messy - and you don't have to catch a cat first.’
Donna Joy Usher
‘Publication is a marathon, not a sprint. Writing the book is only the start.
Jo Linsdell.
‘If you aren’t in the top 1%, self-publishing is your only option. If you are in the top 1%, self-publishing is your best option. There is no case where I recommend someone BEGIN their writing career with a query letter. None.’
High Howey
‘Life is too short to wait for someone else’s publishing schedule.’
L.J. Sellers
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