On the way to self publication.

Back on the Ning, I got into a discussion on the relative merits of external editing. I took the position that if editing precludes the possibility of a financially viable project, then it wasn’t worth doing. The opposing view was that it’s always worth doing. At $2000 a MS, it’s not something I can justify when I’m looking at 500 units of sales. So the question – for me – was one of ROI and the fact that I was selling into an established fanbase who just wanted to get my books on their shelves. The question for the others seemed to be, how can you know who’ll buy your book until you put it up for sale.

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Hence this category, because frankly, I can’t imagine putting a book up for sale until you know if you have a fanbase at all.

But I digress.

That discussion – an author arguing about selling into an established fanbase and ROI — caught the attention of a publisher and my plans for self publishing went off the rails.

Yesterday I signed with Ridan Publishing to produce my first book with them. We only contracted for the first, but they’re interested in the whole corpus and we’ll probably be producing all seven (soon to be eight) works with them.

Bottom line, developing a fan base before committing ink to paper put me in the position of having a reasonable estimate of sales potential, gave me realistic parameters for production, and ultimately that business discussion attracted as much publisher attention as my work.

New Media Publishing, FTW.