My Guest this week started his writing life as an Indie then signed with a traditional publisher, something many independent authors dream about. Yet the story doesn't end there. Ladies and Gentlemen...
Seumas Gallacher
BACK TO SELF-PUBLISHING...
NON, JE NE REGRETTE RIEN...
…yeez put yer self-publishin’ bloke in… yeez put yer self-publishin’
bloke out… in, out, in, out, shake it all about…
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…in the past two or three weeks, several fellow authors have been in
touch asking why I’ve reverted to full metal jacket self-publishing… during
2015, Crooked Cat Publishing and I shared the delight/burden of bringing
my Jack
Calder crime thriller titles to the marketplace… now we’ve agreed to an
amicable parting of the ways, and close writing pals are interested in how that
decision was reached… ‘quite simply and painlessly’ is the
correct answer… but let’s backtrack a wee bit… and a closer look at why, with
80,000+ downloads up to until a year ago, this ol’ Scots Jurassic author should
have joined up with a publishing house in the first place… for six years, many
of yeez will have been following my journey on the solo trail… developing my
market base… ‘building the platform’… honing my marketing and promotional
nous… connecting with so many great pals in the quill-
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…at this point, let me say I met with Steph and Laurence over dinner
in Edinburgh, and they are splendid hosts and good people… so why part
company?... what happened?...
…it’s more a case of what didn’t happen… the avenues to markets was indeed
widened, and my books did become available through the
likes of Smashwords and others… but
resultant sales were a fraction of my expectations, even on, and I s’pose , especially
on Amazon… the over-all total sales
across all my titles actually dropped… blame?... no blame… just a realisation
of a business truism… selling books in the modern publishing environment
is a matter of focus… literature has become more commoditised than ever
before… forget the red herring argument of Print versus eBooks… both are
formidable forces and both streams will remain gigantic markets… concentrated
product flows in the form of more books per day coming to the ‘online
shops’ as well as the continued supplies from the print publishers make
it increasingly difficult to be ‘heard above the noise’… consider
then the good Crooked Cat folks…
they have contracts with almost a hundred authors, some with multiple titles…
and with the best will in the world, it is impossible for any house to give as
much focus (there’s
that WURD ‘focus’
again) to an individual writer as that writer should be capable of applying
himself/herself… many of my Cat pals
will be happy with that status, and not everyone wants to be anything more than an
author… and correctly so… chacun a son gout… not so Master Gallacher… and here we come to
the real, fundamental reason for the separation… I yielded that in-depth
involvement in every part of my ‘business of writing’ which drove me
for the initial stages of my embryonic novelist career… simple things like not
seeing the day to day sales figures online from Amazon… these necessarily switched to the publisher… I missed not
so much the addiction to tracking these hypnotic figures, (which is
an issue, despite my protestations to the contrary!) but more pertinently,
lacking the knowledge of which titles were flagging versus the others, so that
I could divert promotional activity toward the hind markers… prior to Crooked Cat, I utilised a cover artist
friend in the Philippines and was comfortable with that… this changed to a
cooperative process with the publisher… no problem in that in itself, but I
missed working alongside my pal on that creative side… the re-launching of the
first three books and subsequent de novo launching of the fourth fell into the
publisher’s schedule… although they accommodated these in early course, it
still didn’t feel the same as when I could launch any time I was ready… not
quite typing ‘The End’ and ten minutes later a new masterpiece appearing on Amazon Kindle, but yeez get the
picture… I’ve been involved in commercial and financial management all my
working life and it all boils down to my personal need and choice for as much
control of my own business destiny… so, in summary, let me not discourage
anyone from approaching and staying with Crooked
Cat Publishing… Steph, Laurence
and I are on good terms and will hopefully stay that way for a long time… the
many friends acquired in their stable will also be permanent pals, as long as
they continue to be able to translate my Glasgow version of English… and oh,
there’s no earthly reason not to buy my books!… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!...
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Bio:
SEUMAS GALLACHER escaped from the world of finance seven years ago, after a career spanning three continents and five decades.
As the self-professed 'oldest computer Jurassic on the planet’, his headlong immersion into the dizzy world of eBook publishing opened his eyes, mind, and pleasure to the joys of self-publishing. As a former businessman, he rapidly understood the concept of a writer's need to 'build the platform', and from a standing start began to develop a social networking outreach, which now tops 25,000 direct contacts.
His 'Jack Calder' crime thriller series, THE VIOLIN MAN'S LEGACY, VENGEANCE WEARS BLACK and SAVAGE PAYBACK have blown his mind with more than 80,000 e-link downloads to date. His fourth, KILLER CITY was launched in August 2015.
He started a humorous, informative, self-publishers blog three years ago, never having heard of a 'blog' prior to that, was voted 'Blogger of the Year 2013' and now has a loyal blog following on his networks. He says the novels contain his 'Author's Voice', while the blog carries his 'Author's Brand'. And he's LUVVIN IT!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/seumasgallacher
Thank you Seumas for showing us that the boundaries that appear to exist between Traditional Publishing and the Indie route are not as insurmountable as some would have us believe. Best wishes for your novels and looking forward to Jack Calder number 5.
Eric @ www.ericjgates.com
When not penning his humorous blog or writing nail-biting, action thrillers, Seumas can be found here:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/seumasgallacher
Email: seumasgallacher@yahoo.comThank you Seumas for showing us that the boundaries that appear to exist between Traditional Publishing and the Indie route are not as insurmountable as some would have us believe. Best wishes for your novels and looking forward to Jack Calder number 5.
Eric @ www.ericjgates.com
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