Do you want to become an author? Don’t bother with the big house publishers.

In my last writing post I mentioned –

“BIG PUBLISHERS” don’t seem to want any new fiction from unknown authors anymore.”

And now I’ll elaborate on what I mean.

Have you seen your local bookshop shelves (if you’ve still got one), or any of the online book shops?

The majority of books, for me, fall into two categories, REALITY and BIG BUCK authors.


What I mean is this.

Big $$$$$ authors who have already proven they can earn money. Jackie Collins, Janet Evanovich (who earns $40 million for four books), Stephen King, James Patterson the list could go on. You would’ve seen their books on the store shelves taking up most of the space as their past books are constantly republished (like Jackie Collins), and basically the publisher puts all of their money into their big $$$$ money makers. I do love Jackie, I’ll just get that in.

And then there’s REALITY.

Reality books cover many subjects. Real life stories, health, money, cooking, exercise etc, and celebrity. How many celebrities have you seen on the cover of books in the shops. Either autobiographies or novels supposedly written by the celeb themselves.

Although I have it on good authority that many celebs DON’T write their own books, instead an in-house ghost writer takes it on and the celeb gets paid the big bucks.

I definitely know that Katie Price, aka, Jordan, HAS NOT written any of her five books as she admitted it on the Graham Norton show.

I have issues with all of this.

1 – I don’t cook.

2 – I don’t exercise.

3 – I don’t need Dr Phil telling me how to fix my life or Suze Orman telling me how to handle my money.

4 – I don’t need to read a celeb’s sob story about how bad their life was when I can barely manage to keep mine going sometimes.

5 – NONE OF THESE BASTARDS HAVE ACTUALLY WRITTEN THEIR OWN BOOKS!!!!!!!

I have two bugbears.

1 – Celebs get paid mega bucks for not even writing a book.

2 – They get all the money so publishers don’t invest in new authors.

I refuse to read celeb books. I don’t buy any of the others and I get them from my local library and even then I don’t think they’re much cop.

I find it incredibly annoying that everyday people who sit down and slave away writing, typing, editing, submitting and being refused don’t get a fair go in the publishing world.

The “BIG 6” publishers are so far behind the real world it’s ridiculous. There are arguments over royalties, who gets what, who owns what, how many versions get sold, whether they’ll go digital.

It’s just bloody stupid.

So I decided to take control of my own publishing life. I follow Nathan Bransford, formerly of literary agency Curtis Brown in America, and now with website, CNET. He’s also published a children’s book. He wrote a blog about indie writer Amanda Hocking, who had, at the time of me reading, just made 1 million dollars from selling her 11 novels online.

So now I follow her. And after reading her blog found Joe Konrath, who does the same. All of his books are available to buy online and he has been lucky enough to have had some printed by a publisher over the years. He has a very informative blog and writes many posts, along with guest bloggers, about the difference between traditional publishing (paper print) and digital publishing.

Both of these writers have been the inspiration in me making my decision in going digital myself. I’ve wanted to be in print since writing my first novel, THE ROAD TO VEGAS. And after finding CreateSpace, I will now have that. And because it’s print on demand (the book is printed when someone buys it so there are no leftover books lying around) it means it will always be in print along with the digital versions that will be available in many formats.

Thank God for the people who decided to invent these websites and innovative ways of giving the world what they can have without slogging their guts out fighting for recognition from the big fat cats of the publishing world.

Do we writers really need some bigwigs telling us we’re good enough? Or do we have the balls to stand up and say, “I KNOW I’m good enough.”

Although some really aren’t!