As my writing emerged and evolved, so did other transforming aspects of my life. Over the past few years, as I’ve developed my psychic abilities, a number of spirits contacted me, asking me to tell their story. Norman was the first and there have been many since. A Civil War Union soldier, the first mate on a whaling ship, a Victorian era school mistress, and my own great-grand aunt, among others.
I believe these ghosts had a common motivation. They thought their story could help others, but primarily they didn’t want to be forgotten. So, I researched their lives and wrote about their experience, however traumatic or desperate.
With the wonderful response Uncovering Norman received when I released it in 2018, you would think publishers would be interested in adding this kind of book to their lists. They were not. To quote one of the responses to my submission: “They are such compelling stories, but we haven't had a lot of sales success with books on a similar topic and will have to pass on this project.” It’s all about the money and I can’t blame them. It’s a business. I also submitted excerpts of these stories to magazines with no better success. I’ve struggled with what to do with them. I promised the ghosts their story would be told, and I felt I was letting them down.
Over the past month, I reached a decision as I considered where I stood at the Crossroads of my writing career. With the path of validation at my back, I chose one of the other roads as the direction for my spirit stories, creating my own opportunity. Time to turn left, away from traditional publishing.
I researched self-publishing options in order to decide if one would work for this project. From my experience with Uncovering Norman, I knew I didn’t want to publish with a vanity press and have to pay those exorbitant fees again. I also didn’t want to use Amazon as my publisher, for a whole lot of reasons, but mostly because I wanted to retain control of my own work.
I spoke with other writers I knew who used various self-publishing platforms and came up with a short list of those I thought might work for me with this project. Finally, I chose Draft2Digital. They was no fee to publish and their payment consisted of 10% of royalties after the books were sold. They offered both ebooks and paperbacks, and a number of creative options for formatting and presentation.
I studied all the information on their website. They recently acquired Smashwords, a self-publishing platform for ebooks only. They also offered Books2Read, a platform focused on readers accessing the D2D books, and Universal Link that offered a one-click link to all stores selling a particular book. The available stores, for both digital and print books, included all the big names like Barnes & Noble and Amazon, along with a number of smaller venues. There was lots more, and after comparisons with other self-publishing platforms, I was convinced.
On Tuesday, July 23, 2024, my next book Lady, Will You Hear Me? will be released in the ebook version. The paperback edition will be released about a month later in August. (I will be away on vacation and wanted to see how the ebook process worked before going ahead with the print version, in case there were changes to be made.) This is the second book in what I’ve chosen to call the True Ghost Story series, with Uncovering Norman being the first book in the series. There will be many more in the future.
I was comfortable with the Draft2Digital process, though there was definitely a learning curve. This will be the topic of my next post. Until then, I hope you’ll consider purchasing an ebook of Lady, Will You Hear Me? or hold on to buy the paperback when it’s available next month. And Uncovering Norman is available for sale on the Balboa Press site.
What’s next? The process of producing my own ebook.
Simultaneously published on Substack.
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