{"id":66,"date":"2008-07-30T13:01:01","date_gmt":"2008-07-30T18:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=66"},"modified":"2025-07-24T19:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T00:41:09","slug":"miss-jackson-if-youre-nasty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/miss-jackson-if-youre-nasty\/","title":{"rendered":"Miss Jackson if you’re nasty"},"content":{"rendered":"

My subtitle says, \u201cReligion. Money. Politics. Sex.\u201d Okay, I think I\u2019ve covered them all, but my tag cloud says I\u2019m getting heavy on the religion side, so let\u2019s hit the money for a while.<\/p>\n

Over on Teleread<\/a>, while looking for a post on ePub format (I know I read it the other day and I\u2019ll address that in a future post), I found this gem: Top Ten Self-Publishing Myths<\/a>. It\u2019s all relevant to me, but I\u2019m not going to post it all here. Copyright, you know. Go read, then come back!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There are only two issues in self-publishing for me: Control<\/a> and money.<\/p>\n

On control:<\/p>\n

It used to be perfectly respectable to sell between 10K\u201320K copies, but these days sales on that scale are deemed a failure by big publishers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

For mainstream authors with major publishers, career longevity is entirely under the publisher\u2019s control.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On money:<\/p>\n

The only authors who get significant promotion budgets and support from their publishers these days are best-selling and prestige clients. Everyone else is on the hook to do their own promotion, regardless of who published them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

If your book doesn\u2019t earn back its advance, or sells only modestly beyond the advance threshold, your publisher won\u2019t want to publish your next book. You\u2019ll be viewed as damaged goods by every other imprint of that publisher, as well as by every imprint of the five other major publishing houses in the U.S.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If that weren\u2019t enough, I present to you two published authors\u2019 most excellent takes on the money:<\/p>\n

\n

Jeaniene Frost<\/a><\/p>\n

Jenna Peterson<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I\u2019ve had my own business for going on 5 years now. I\u2019ve had another one of them for 3. I work at home, I do whatever needs to be done, I make a little money, and I don\u2019t have to drive anywhere or put up with office politics bullshit. The only control exerted over me is whatever my customer wants and I am more than happy to provide that.<\/p>\n

I was head over heels in love with capitalism<\/a> long before I had my own business, but I was scared to venture out on my own because that seemed to be something Other People did, people who had a courageous streak a mile wide. Not me. I wasn\u2019t courageous. They (you know, the Nefarious They) controlled things, ran things, and I was not worthy of being included (because nobody asked me to, you see).<\/p>\n

Then I thought about it. Stepped away from the issue of They. Started asking questions like, \u201cSo, who is They? And why are They saying I can\u2019t do X? And what would They do if I did do X?\u201d Which led to, \u201cOh, hey, I can do whatever the hell I want!\u201d The illusion turned to dust like a vampire Buffy just slew.<\/p>\n

There is risk involved, which is the downside of taking your life in your hands like that. Money goes out before it comes back in. I know we writers have all heard the phrase (with regard to subsidy publishing), \u201cMoney flows toward<\/em> the author.\u201d If you\u2019re looking at it from a business standpoint (as opposed to a \u201cgetting accepted by New York\u201d standpoint), the money only starts flowing toward the author after the author\u2019s spent a great deal of money to begin with.<\/p>\n

I have a series of 5 other books based on The Proviso. <\/em> One is an historical. One is post-apocalyptic. One is the story of the villain from The Proviso<\/em> and is recent-historical (as in, occurs in the \u201960s and \u201970s). A good portion of most of them is written. Their covers are mostly finished. I intend to put out one a year.<\/p>\n

Do I consider this my author career path? No. I consider it a 6-year business plan. In other words, I\u2019m willing to put the money and time into this for 6 years to get it to pay off. I heard once that the best promotion in the world is to establish a backlist and that is what I intend to do. I can keep my books on the shelves as long as I want to. I can do anything I want and it might take a long time, but I have the luxury of that time.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Because I\u2019m in control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My subtitle says, \u201cReligion. Money. Politics. Sex.\u201d Okay, I think I\u2019ve covered them all, but my tag cloud says I\u2019m getting heavy on the religion side, so let\u2019s hit the money for a while. Over on Teleread, while looking for a post on ePub format (I know I read it the other day and I\u2019ll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money","category-self-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14933,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/14933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}