This week I was contacted by a school administrator who was writing a book about how to fight back against school privatization efforts.
She found my website and wrote because she wanted to know how to get her book in the hands of teachers. A long conversation about self-publishing followed.
It constantly amazes me who's found me since I wrote a book and released it into the world. This teacher said she'd found me when a friend forwarded her a post and a blurb about my book was at the bottom.
This reminded me of a recent post from Seth Godin titled "Almost No One":
There's a huge difference between "no one" and "almost no one".
Almost no one is going to hire you.
Almost no one is going to become a true fan.
Almost no one is going to tell someone else about your work.
Almost no one is going to push you to make your work ever better.
If only 1% of the US population steps up, that's 3,000,000 people in the category of "almost no one."
If only one out of 10,000 internet users engages with you, that's still hundreds of thousands of people.
The chances that everyone is going to applaud you, never mind even become aware you exist, are virtually nil. Most brands and organizations and individuals that fail fall into the chasm of trying to be all things in order to please everyone, and end up reaching no one.
That's the wrong thing to focus on. Better to focus on and delight almost no one.
I think sometimes we forget how truly difficult it is to wrap our arms around a number like 8 billion.
Over the past couple months, it's been a joy talking with everybody in the comments and learning from their experiences. So I thought I'd put together a list of self-publishers for us and the larger community.
Take a moment and click around.
And if you have a book project you're working on or have finished or there's any particular expertise in the area of self-publishing you want to talk about (or anything else for that matter - this is Daily Kos), please post in the comments.
Here, in the order that I started writing them down are some of the self-publishers of Daily Kos:
|
DKos Alias |
Book(s)/Project(s) |
|
dinazina (website) |
The Costume Goddess Tells All |
|
wonderful world (website) |
Hero for Hire, The Stone Gods, Dark Mountain, Rivers of Sand, The Lifeboat: Surviving the Writer's Life (Books on Amazon) |
|
Gottlieb |
Notes for a Dog Rescue in Progress |
|
politichic |
Fear of Falling |
|
k9disc (website) |
The Art of K9Disc |
|
wmspringer |
Healthcare in the 21st Century, Selling on Amazon.com
|
|
Diana in NoVa |
Somewhere My Drum Awaits Me |
|
asterkitty (website) |
Drawing Out the Muses, Pricing Your Artwork with Confidence, Pulling Abstraction from Reality |
|
nzanne |
Practical PC: an Illustrated Guide to Photovoltaics |
|
James Wells (website) |
The Great Symmetry |
|
le sequoit |
Slojo’s Reality, Ptunk |
|
teresahill (website) |
Christmas with the McRaes, Saving Myself for You,Twelve Days, Edge of Heaven, Hero of My Heart, and many others |
|
Temmoku (book by her husband) |
91 Bravo Medic: A Memoir of the Second Korean War |
|
eparrot (website) |
New World Orders, Alive From New York, 2012: The Fifth World, Alive from America |
|
Ash Tree (website) |
The Golden Calf, North of Sunset, The American Book of the Dead |
|
athenap (website) |
Winterjacked, Forever Material, The Spelling Error |
|
SusanCStrong (website) |
Move Our Message: How to Get America’s Ear |
|
winifred3 |
Mrs. O'Leary's Boarding House: Aliens Only, The Last Princess of Atlantis, To Kill an Eidolon (Books on Amazon) |
|
One Pissed Off Liberal |
Wear Your Love Like Heaven: The Hippie Diaries |
|
oldmaestro |
Feeding the Angels, The Unacknowledged |
|
Blll White |
Platinum Moon, Gerrymander America (coming soon) |
|
Cosmicdebris, Decembersue (editors) |
Art in a Liberal Frame |
|
Letsgetitdone |
Fixing the Debt without Breaking America |
|
Mark Sumner |
The Naturalist, Devil's Tower, The News from the Edge Series, The Evolution of Everything: How Selection Shapes Culture, Commerce, and Nature (Books on Amazon) |
|
Molly Weasley |
The Political Blogging Murder |
|
18038 |
The Practical Pionus |
|
psyched |
Money as Information |
|
Greyhawk |
Her Final Year: A Care-Giving Memoir,
Communion of Dreams, Sync
|
|
Horace Boothroyd III |
Chap Book Review: Armegeddon in Retrospect |
|
RochelleLyn |
Lost Long (The Freyr Chronicles Book 1) |
If I've missed anyone, my humble apologies. Please pipe up and yell at me. I will add you to this list that I hope to publish periodically.
Two other quick call outs: skywriter is a former journalist who helps people publish for a living. She wrote the splendid post Why Indy Self-Publishers are Smart to Use Two Printers Instead of One and if you're looking to employ someone to help you, I'd suggest sending her a kosmail.
Also, I found out last week that Ash Tree founded the site Self-Publishing Review. This is a promotional site for self-published authors where you can receive a professional review. They also have a contest for self-published books.
Almost no one
When I pitched this series, I have to admit I was a little afraid that no one would read it, that there were no self-publishers or no one would be interested.
Instead, the exact opposite happened. People came out of the woodwork to talk about their experiences and offer advice. Even people who hadn't self-published expressed interest and jumped in. I think this is the difference between "no one" and "almost no one".
What's your project?
I've had great conversations with I believe, everyone on this list, and in the process learned and continue to learn a tremendous amount. Don't be surprised if I reach out to you and ask you to talk about your book and/or area of expertise.
I've already asked a couple folks if they'd like to guest host and next week Athena Grayson (athenap) is going to talk about launching a book on a budget.
What do you feel are your areas of expertise when it comes to self-publishing? And if I missed you on the list, what is your book or ongoing project?
Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule:
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David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy.