Lessons Learned in Self-Publishing: Part One

For those of you who only keep up with my blog and don't pay much attention to anything else I do (and why you only keep up with my semi-hardly-regular blog, I have no idea), Elephants in the Living Room part II, and the Complete Edition of Elephants, have both come out. And, if you follow my Facebook page, you know that my next book, an all new series, will be releasing early in June this year. On top of that, my beta reader notes came back for the Round 10 Core Rules, meaning the printed edition will become available soon enough.

So, I've been fairly busy. But that's not the point of this post.

No, for this post I wanted to talk about the self-publishing journey I've had so far, and what I have to look forward to from here on out.

Self publishing Round 10 was quite the adventure. I underestimated the amount of work required, especially for such a book as that, and ended up building hype way to early, so that by the time it came out, most of that hype had died down. It's had marginal success with the PDF, but there's still a lot of room to grow. And I know once the final version of the Core Rules are released, along with an updated Quick Start Guide and an original, ready-to-run module, that should rebuild some momentum that may have been lost along the way.

The things I've learned from doing R10: print on demand is HARD. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of practice, a lot of problems and a lot of...well, patience. I have since decided that, unless one of the later books becomes exceedingly popular, or if I have a lot of material that could be collected as a single volume, I will not be pursuing print for any future R10 products. It has slowed me down more than anything else, and if there's anything I hate, its being slowed down.

As for my fiction, it has been smoother than my gaming products. In less than half the time that Round 10 getting to PDF took, I have released two books and am starting a third. The process for written fiction is easier to handle than for a game book. No tables. No charts. No extended examples. No play tests. Just write, read, edit, rewrite, and release. For this new series, I'm putting more effort into it than I did for Elephants, and am extremely excited for where the series is going.

The things I've learned from writing fiction: I can do what I want on a schedule that works for me AND is satisfying. There are fewer bumps in the road, fewer hoops to jump through. Sure, the pride I feel for my books isn't quite like my Round 10 pride, but its there nonetheless.

Also, the plus of self-publishing is that I can write what I want to write. I can go from young-adult fiction (like with Elephants) and move on to science fiction/action (like with my upcoming series) and still devote my all to each in their own way.

I've gotten a lot done in the last few months, but there's a lot more to do from here on out.