This book is a work-in-progress. I will spare you the BS and just tell you my story. This will also tell you how to self-publish, which I define to mean “act as your own publisher.” Not publish through a vanity press or a hybrid publisher (whatever that is). I mean establishing yourself as a publishing business.

This book is by no means exhaustive. It won’t tell you how to market your book or become a bestselling author. But it gives you the basics, enough to help you get started. This is after you’ve written the book, mind you. Right? Of course.

This here is your sample from the book. The rest will be on Substack behind a paywall. Check it below.

The BS-Free Indie Author Guide

by Debbi Mack

Introduction

I should warn you that my advice on self-publishing is given strictly to avoid having to answer the same questions, over and over. It is many things: a guide, a how-to book, a set of instructions, a step-by-step description of how to put your books up for sale and distribution online through retailers.

It is not a feel-good read about how to make big money as an ebook author. Basically, the truth is, I got lucky. I worked for that luck, no question. But luck and good timing played a huge part.

Now, I feel like I’m constantly reinventing myself. I began writing screenplays in earnest in 2012. This is not something you do without sacrificing time to honing your craft as a storyteller. Like self-publishing, which involves a load of work, screenwriting isn’t a way to make money overnight. Nonetheless, I now write screenplays, as well as novels.

This book grew out of an article I wrote for a nonprofit writers group many years ago. I took the basic concepts and have expanded on them to include as many new developments as possible. By the time I actually “publish” this thing, parts of it may be outdated. Everything changes so fast, it’s positively mind-numbing.

So I’ve confined myself pretty much to the basics. That’s all I can offer, but it’s a start.

So let’s do this.

My Story

When I first ventured into fiction writing, conventional wisdom was to never self-publish one’s work. It was thought to be nothing less than professional suicide. Writers who self-published were looked down upon as poor, pathetic desperate souls who didn’t have the talent or persistence to impress agents and/or publishers (especially the big ones in New York, aka, “real ones”).

I followed this advice and ended up signing a contract for a three-book mystery series with a small press that went under nine months later. My debut novel went out of print within a year. So much for that. But I kept writing and querying agents and small presses, anyway. Over the years, I revised one novel, wrote a sequel and completed two standalone novels. Meanwhile, I still had this out-of-print novel just sitting and burning a hole in my computer. Finally, I took matters into my own hands. I decided I’d flout conventional wisdom and self-publish the book.

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