For Author Crush Month 2012, I wanted to continue my study of self-publishing. So I asked four friends to share with you their self-publishing experiences from four different vantage points. Today, James Scott Bell shares his story of self-publishing shorter works even while he continues to traditionally publish his novels. Please welcome Jim!

So I’m sitting there little over a year ago after having three books come out and looking at these people self-publishing and making extra dough. Sometimes a lot of extra dough. So I finally said, What am I doing sitting here not making extra dough?

My current traditional contract is under a pen name, K. Bennett. This is for zombie legal thrillers, a genre I happened to invent. That left a window for James Scott Bell to start experimenting with e-books. And to become the sort of writer he always admired.

I love the old pulp writers, the guys who made a living pounding out stories during the Depression, some of whom became truly great. People like Hammett, Chandler, Cornell Woolrich. I like the idea of being prolific and being good at the same time.

I started with two collections that each included a complete novella and three stories. I did the novellas in the style of James M. Cain, another prolific writer of the old school.

One More Lie is the title novella of one collection. It’s the story of what happens when you make one bad choice and try to cover it with another.

Watch Your Back is the novella in the other collection, and it’s one of those stories where the too-slick hero gets involved with a femme fatale. Sort of like Double Indemnity. Who is using whom? This collection also features a story readers seem to love, “Heed the Wife,” with the sort of twist ending I love.

I find these types of stories to be profoundly moral. I think the best noir comes out of the view that rough justice happens. It’s not pretty, but it gets the job done.

Also, I put out a collection of some of my articles on fiction writing as an e-book, Writing Fiction for All You’re Worth. And I started a short story series, boxing tales set in 1950s Los Angeles.  The first of those is “Iron Hands.”

All this was done as I completed work on my contracted books. I was busy, but extremely happy. Especially when I started getting those monthly infusions into my bank account.

Here’s the deal: It’s all about options and freedom. So long as you’re honoring your traditional contracts, and you have negotiated them in the proper way, and you’re getting along with everybody, having an independent line that complements your traditional work is a no-brainer. It’s real income, and I have this quaint notion that writers are entitled to earn real income from what they write.

But with this freedom there is responsibility. Being in charge of your own writing means you are CEO of your own publishing enterprise. You can expect to experience the stresses and strains of running a small business. You will need new skills to handle them. These can be acquired, but only through effort and self-discipline.

The most challenging part is internal quality control. With traditional publishing, you’re working with a team of professionals and a window of time of a year to eighteen months per book. One of the most exciting things about indie publishing is the speed with which you can bring out books. But you have to find ways to give your work the attention it needs, everything from cover design to marketing copy to editing and formatting. You simply have to think like a business for all these tasks.

So don’t move too fast. Learn your stuff. Put yourself through a self-imposed meat grinder with your writing. Get critiqued. Hire a good freelance editor. Use beta readers you can trust to give you the straight scoop.

This all takes time to develop, but you need that network. You’re not just going to roll a new car out of your factory in a couple of days. You’re going to need tests to make sure the thing runs and can make a long trip. Turn out a couple of those and you can make it an assembly line.

Which is the coin of the realm in self-publishing. It’s as simple and as profound as this: write crazy good books and stories and get them out into the market. And keep doing that, over and over, for the rest of your life.

James Scott Bell is the author of the #1 bestselling book for writers, Plot & Structure, as well as Revision & Self-Editing and The Art of War for Writers. His latest release is Conflict & Suspense.

Please leave a comment and ask Jim any questions you have about his books or his foray into self-publishing. He’d love to hear from you!

My friend Janice is enjoying a milestone moment. A major traditional publisher will release her novel, Accused, tomorrow! I asked Janice if she would stop by and tell us a little about her journey.

Routine
1. A customary or regular course of procedure.
2. Commonplace tasks, chores, or duties as must be done regularly or at specified intervals; typical or everyday activity: the routine of an office.
3. Regular, unvarying, habitual, unimaginative, or rote procedure.

I begin with the definition of ‘routine’ for a couple of reasons. First, I’ve always wondered if the path to publication for my novel Accused was routine. And second, I realized that the very thing that can make a book ready for publication is commonplace, regular, and unvarying.

Accused, my first book with Tyndale House Publishers, is set for release February 1. It’s ironic to me that Accused is also the first book I ever attempted to write, and the first to be rejected many times. This, I’ve learned, is routine; every writer experiences rejection at one time or another. Few writers can write a perfect first draft that is sold immediately to their first choice publisher. (Can anyone?)

I’ve always loved to read, and when I stepped over the line to try and write a novel, the biggest question in my mind was: Do I have the talent to be a writer?  When I attended a small writer’s conference and heard a speaker say that anyone willing to work hard and study their craft could be a writer, I set about learning the craft, and I dreamed of having a novel bearing my name published by a traditional publishing house.

I’d been writing police reports for a few years and I had to unlearn “the facts, please, only the facts.” To learn the craft of writing novels, I read a lot of books by successful authors on how to write a novel. I read books by successful authors in my genre, Chandler, Block, Crais, Grafton etc. I also read best sellers in all genres, wondering if there were a similar thread in the prose, a trick there I could learn to help me be successful.

Alongside the reading, I was writing. I had an idea for a suspense novel and I wrote and rewrote, wrote and rewrote. I probably drove friends crazy with, “Can you read this bit and tell me how it sounds?” What helped me the most was finding a mentor who was a published author and then a group of writers to talk to and work with through the learning process.

When I thought I’d finally gotten it all down, and printed out what I was sure was the final, perfect draft of my novel, I was certain publishers would fall all over themselves to buy it. I’d followed directions, hadn’t I? Surely that meant success.

It wasn’t success, it was the beginning of a lot of rejection and a lot more hard work. Now came the commonplace, the regular and the unvarying routine of revision, revision, and revision. I’d read in one writing book that a writer needed to go through their manuscript until they were sick of it, then go through it one more time.

A lot of people at this point might say, “What is the point? Why didn’t you just self-publish and forget traditional publishers?”

Because that wasn’t my dream.

Back to routine. The path to publication for me was a lot of hard work, a lot of study and a lot of writing and rewriting. Now, on February 1, 2012, the dream I pursued will come to fruition. My novel will be published by a large, traditional publisher. But what I’ve found even more gratifying than a publishing contract is when someone says to me, “I picked up your book and couldn’t put it down!”

It was a routine of study, reading, writing and re-writing that produced a book I can’t wait to see in bookstores.

If you have any questions for Janice, please leave a comment. She’d love to hear from you!

A retired Long Beach, California, police officer of 22 years (16 in uniform and 6 as a non-career officer), Janice Cantore worked a variety of assignments – patrol, administration, juvenile investigations and training. During the course of her career in uniform Janice found that faith was indispensable to every aspect of the job. She published articles on faith at work, one for a quarterly newspaper called “Cop and Christ”, and another for the monthly magazine “Today’s Christian Woman”.

With retirement, Janice began to write longer pieces and several novels were born. She has a two-book suspense series in print that she calls Brinna’s Heart Series, The Kevlar Heart and A Heart of Justice (Oaktara Publishing). Janice is excited and honored to now be a part of the Tyndale House Publishing family. Accused, the first installment in her new suspense offering, The Pacific Coast Justice Series, is set to be released February 1, 2012, and will kick off a brand new chapter in her writing career. In addition to suspense and action, her books feature strong female leads. Janice writes suspense novels designed to keep you engrossed and leave you inspired.

You can connect with Janice on Facebook and on her web site.

It’s January and it’s Monday. Beginnings make me feel like it’s time to hurry up and get moving. I’m a morning person (when I’ve slept well) and mornings make me feel that way, too. Hurry up! Go running and eat breakfast and hurry to your computer! So much to do! (Or on more embarrassing days – Hurry and get to your computer! What do you mean it’s dinner time? I haven’t even taken a shower, let along exercised or anything else!)

There’s so much to do because there’s so much to learn. I spent all day last Thursday just trying to read through some of the online group posts about writing and publishing and self-publishing, and then clicking the links to the great posts those people had found, which led to more links and reading more posts. Sheesh! How’s a girl to get any writing done?

But there’s a lot more to being a 21^st century author than there was to being a 1950s author. Not only do you have to learn a lot, you have to do a lot. I took Kristen Lamb’s class on Becoming a Brand two weeks ago and now I’m trying to do everything I’ve been learning about. I’m following more people on Twitter and Facebook, retweeting and replying, and commenting on blogs. I think I did a week’s worth of social media in one day.

I saw some immediate results (I tripled my Twitter followers and got my own blog up and rolling again), so I downloaded the Kindle samples of both of Kristen’s books, Are You There Blog? It’s Me, Writer and We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media. I loved the samples, so I bought the books. I’m reading both at the same time now, and trying to apply something new every day. Wow.

There are a gazillion great blogs out there and I read a lot of them last week! (This week, I swear, is going to be more about writing and balance.) Instead of trying to explain everything I read, I’ll just give you some short descriptions and you can decide what you can use.

Oh, and in case I lose you somewhere amongst all these links, let me remind you that Author Crush Month starts on Wednesday! Yay!! We love Author Crush Month, and we know you do, too! We’ve got some really great guests this month talking about their process, their craft, their journey. Be sure to stop by every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in February.

Also, we will have a special guest joining us on the first Tuesday of every month beginning in March. You’re going to love her! (You might even already know her!)

And tune in tomorrow as we welcome Janice Cantore to talk with us about her new book, Accused. If you remember, Janice has been struggling to sell her books with a small press but last summer signed a 3-book deal with a major publisher! Her new book releases February 1^st. Woo-hoo!

And now to my list o’ links:

Elizabeth Spann Craig explains how she uses Google Calendar to stay organized

An online self-publishing conference! I’m waiting by my Inbox for an email with details about registration costs.

The CEO of Smashwords gives us his thoughts on self-publishing in 2011

A Smashwords blog post about the Amazon Select program

I took an awesome online class in November about helping your brain work better, and the teachers wrote this guest post

I’m signed up for another online class next month on how to write cozy mysteries, and here is an article by the teacher (I’m hoping it will help me bring my superhero romantic comedies up a level)

A great craft post from Jody Hedlund on how to make your book play out like a movie

Another self-published author, PJ Sharon, shares her 2011 numbers

From Kristen Lamb’s blog, What’s the Problem with FREE?

Sharpen Your Blogging Habits, a 4-part series from Kristin Nador

Which could lead you to this brilliant post on creating better tag lines for your blog  (I just changed my tag line for my own blog. What do you think? Better? Not quite right yet? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!)

From Bob Mayer, a post that explains why I’ve never dreamed of being on a bestselling list, I dream of selling books for the rest of my life 

From Writer Beware, The Fine Print of iBooks Author, free software from Apple to create ebooks that can only be sold in the iTunes store

And the blog author’s reply to common misconceptions about what he wrote

Books I’m reading: Are You There Blog? It’s Me, Writer; We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media; Dollars and Sense: The Definitive Guide to Self-Publishing Success