It’s once again Self-Published Author Appreciation Week, a celebration of those brave souls who take all the publishing responsibilities and risks on themselves*. I regretted not being on the ball to participate too much in this last year, so put it on my calendar in May to start planning something. But what? I could just post review-y posts about a bunch of Self-Published works, but I always seem to struggle when I try to save up a bunch of posts to do at a certain time. Also, it would look pretty much like every week here already, and I wanted to do something more.
* Although you’ll see this week (if you’re not aware already), no one really does this alone.
So I decided to try to do some Q&As with self-published authors, to see what it’s like for them. Or to ask for some Guest Posts about some aspect of it. It’s one thing to say we appreciate them, but learning more about what it takes from those who’ve been there should add to our appreciation, right? So I sent requests out to some that I’ve interacted with a bit and thought would be open to it. One of the first to respond was JCM Berne, who added, “I’m on a discord server with a ton of self published authors, I can spread the word.” I said sure, that’d be great—and within minutes I start hearing from people I’d never heard of (and some I had, but had never interacted with).
Before I knew it, I had more people interested in this than I knew what to do with.
When I told Berne about the response he’d generated he replied, “Actually, that should be your theme for the week. ‘I offered to publicize some self-published writers and they swamped me.’ It says so much about what there is to say about the communities.” It does indeed, as he put it, “Part of self-pub is we all think of marketing as our job and we’re all eager to find ways to do it.” This is particularly borne out in those who had to drop out due to time constraints—they clearly regretted doing so and asked me to be sure to hit them up for something like this in the future. No one I approach said no, some couldn’t squeeze it in, but they clearly regretted it.
I think that’s the biggest takeaway from all this, all authors—even those who have a marketing arm behind them—but particularly those on the self-publishing front need eyeballs and will jump through a lot of hoops to get it. Particularly with the way the social media landscape has shifted so much in the last few months, it’s harder now more than ever to get attention.
So this week, we’re going to be hearing from 17 different self-published authors in a series of Q&As—all of which ended up looking very different from each other and covering different aspects of self-publishing—plus a couple of Guest Posts about it. You’ll see some seemingly contradictory answers, but will find some common threads throughout. There’s a variety of genres represented, and a variety of levels of success, too (however you want to define success). Some of these authors are still trying to find their audience, some are having great success. Each and every one of these is well-worth your time (I think—and I’ve read them multiple times at this point). I’m beyond grateful to each of these authors.
So by all means, appreciate the self-published authors you know and/or read. Show this appreciation by buying their stuff, buying gift copies, talking about the books online and in real life, making a mortgage/rent payment for them, and so on. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy and learn a little from this series.
Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
The 2023 Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Logo was made by Witty and Sarcastic Book Club
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