I’ve made a commitment to myself to invest approximately 1 hour a day to social networking enterprises–involving myself more in social networking is on my New Year’s Resolutions list– although I admit I already haven’t been doing a very good job of maintaining that average when there are so many other things that require my attention.
I try to prioritize my time based upon accomplishing goals that benefit the greatest number of our authors (or future authors) as possible, and by that benchmark, it is difficult to justify spending much time on this blog. How does THIS blog help an Outskirts Press author? It probably doesn’t, or at least it doesn’t as much as offering the Espresso Book Machine editions, which we just announced today.
Getting that option set-up for our authors took a lot of my time, but it benefits a lot of our authors (current and future authors), so in my mind, that is time well-spent. So, in the dark recesses of my mind, all I can hope is that our authors find some kernels of marketing insights from this blog and can apply concepts I introduce here to their writing, publishing, and marketing efforts in the name of making them more successful. I am a writer first, and a CEO second, so my commitment is always to our current and future authors. I’ll talk more about that soon.
Anyway, back to the story: adding books to the blog. By the time I’m writing this posting, I had already added “Self Publishing Simplified” and “Sell Your Book on Amazon” to my blog, but today I added one of my remaining books, “Adventures in Publishing.” It’s a cute little children’s book about how to publish a children’s book, with full-color illustrations and rhyming verse. It’s meant to serve as an example of what is possible at Outskirts Press while also helping potential children’s book authors with the “how to” steps required to actually get their story illustrated and published.
I have another book, “Publishing Gems” which I may or may not add. Honestly, I’m not as proud of it as I am of the other three… it was my first non-fiction book and my main goal with writing and publishing it was to simply “get it out there into the world” as quickly as possible. Our self-publishing services certainly help people accomplish that goal. And by taking that baby step, I was able to take a breath, step back, and work on something of a higher caliber, like “Sell Your Book on Amazon.” Does that make “Publishing Gems” a poor book? Maybe — but perhaps its goal wasn’t to be “good.” Maybe its goal was to help me overcome something within myself to allow me to focus on “Sell Your Book on Amazon.” So does that make “Publishing Gems” a successful book because it accomplished its goal? Absolutely.
Different authors have different goals, and only the author knows what those goals are. Readers who project their own goals, or qualifications for success, onto the book and then announce them “successes” or “failures” are not giving enough credit to the author. Self publishing companies like Outskirts Press help authors realize a wide variety of goals, because as a writer myself, I realize that writers write for a variety of reasons.
President of Outskirts Press 