The Ills of Self-Publishing

Self-publishing is an exercise in humility. I speak from experience.

I resorted to self-publishing after being dismissed by more than 60 agents. You can cut out the middle man – the agent – and send your manuscript directly to publishing companies. Good luck with that. I tried; they weren’t interested either.

You finish your manuscript and there’s a great sense of pride, anticipation and hope. You’ve written your magnum opus, your book is going to sell out in stores, you’re ready for your close-up like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Within months this giddiness turns into shame, despair and hopelessness. Why? Because you can’t find an agent or publisher, which is the experience of an overwhelming majority of writers. Between 1-2 million authors have self-published a book in the past five years, according to the Alliance of Independent Authors.

And what a drag it is.

You have to be your own agent, public relations man, publisher, book formatter and book cover designer. You’re doing the work of an army of people. You’re responsible for line-editing and content-editing. I paid a guy to content edit and another to design my website and create my social media platform. Through trial and a whole lot of error, I created my book on IngramSpark and Amazon KDP. Indie authors use Amazon KDP to boost print and ebook sells, IngramSpark to get their books in bookstores, online and brick-and-mortar. I’ve spent more than $10,000 in getting self-published.

Has it been worth it? Well, in two weeks, I’ve sold 19 books, all print, six of which were bought by me. I’m assuming the other 13 were friends and family members. I bought my book so I could go to bookstores and give it to managers. I didn’t realize that wasn’t how it worked. I went to one South Loop bookstore and after giving my why-you-should-sell-my-book spiel to a manager, I handed her a copy. She very literally said, “I don’t want this.”

She instead directed me to her store’s website, which has a link where indie authors can answer questions as to why the store should sell their book. You submit your answer and a form email bounces back to you, telling you that it’ll take at least a month for them to get back to you. And that they might not get back to you at all.

That’s a thing in the literary world – not getting back to you and form rejections. Agents are extraordinarily good at both. Of all the agents I queried, more than 90 percent never replied, the rest sent soulless, not-interested letters that you know others are getting word for word because on the comment section of agent database QueryTracker, prospective writers share their rejections with each other.

 So, I’m doing it the hard way, which will make success that much sweeter. I draw strength through the story of Allen Levi. He’s the 70-year-old novice writer whose book went from being self-published to New York Times bestseller. Theo of Golden is about an elderly man in a fictional southern town who buys pencil portraits of locals displayed in a coffee shop and returns them to their subjects. It was self-published through Amazon in 2023. Through word-of-mouth promotion, the book sold 3,000 copies by the end of 2023. Atria Books, an imprint of Big 5 publisher Simon & Schuster, republished the book last year and it has now sold more than 2.5 million copies.

So there’s hope. Regardless of how well my book sells, I’m grateful. Writing the book was therapeutic and I have some people I need to thank for it getting published.

Thank you, Robin Hemley. Fantastic job editing the story for content. I wasn’t sure I had a story worth telling but your insistence that I did gave me the confidence to re-write the thing and turn it into, in my opinion, something much better than the dense, aimless and themeless first draft. Thank you.

Thank you, Sean McClelland. Fantastic job line editing. I had the book live on Amazon and IngramSparks when you read it and noticed all the typos and grammar mistakes. Your editing saved me the embarrassment of people buying a book chock full of errors. And that you decided to do the job for free is something I won’t forget. Thank you.

Thank you, Matt Cail. Fantastic job on the website. Everybody who has mentioned it to me says how much they like it. I love it, too. Thank you.

Thank you, Dave “Hubby Boy” Ebert. Fantastic job creating the book cover. Dave’s the white guy grabbing me in two different pictures on my website photo gallery, one 30-plus years ago at his wedding reception and this past April at a Cubs game. Knowing you and your wife (the Good Kid) since our Northern Illinois University days has been a blessing. Thank you.

Thank you, Tom Archdeacon. Fantastic job on your story about the book in the Dayton Daily News (the story link is on my website). A little bit about Arch: He’s probably the greatest newspaper writer I’ve met outside of Jim Murray, who I interviewed once at a Super Bowl, and Michael Wilbon, who I had dinner with along with a group of others after a Dallas Cowboys playoff game. Arch was a mentor and all-around good guy. I was a sports writer at the Dayton Daily from 1998-2004, and all of us young reporters there LOVED going out with Arch after work because he always picked up the tab. And he only ate at great restaurants. He’d buy us steak, lobster, Italian, barbecue, you name it.

Arch is one of those old-school newspapermen, guys you don’t see so much of anymore. With his Hawaiian shirts, ponytail, bushy moustache and tall frame, he had personality and he stood out. I can still see him now, typing feverishly on deadline with just his index fingers, waving at writers in the press box to shut up so he could concentrate. He was not to be bothered when he was writing. But then he’d turn in his story, go back to being this really approachable guy and would take us all out for food and drink.

He partied hard and could outdrink anybody. And the man has stories. Boy, does he have stories. Among other things, he’s covered multiple Olympics, most of the Super Bowls, all of the big auto races and went to New York’s Ground Zero the week after 9/11. But what I admired most about Arch was that he covered some of the greatest boxers of all time, including Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard, Mike Tyson, Aaron Pryor and the incomparable Muhammad Ali. I used to watch boxing on CBS’ Sports Spectacular and ABC’s Wide World of Sports when I was growing up. I loved boxing. I could listen to Arch, who is in the Florida Boxing Hall of Fame, talk about the sport for hours.

But my favorite Arch story doesn’t involve a boxer. It centers around former Miami Dolphin Roy Foster. Arch covered the Dolphins in the earlier 1980s for the Miami News. He was going to a game one particular day with another writer when they decided to stop at a bar for a quick drink.

That quick drink became several. And Arch’s colleague happened to look at the television and notice the Dolphins game had already started. They both raced to the stadium and arrived just as the game was ending. Arch went into the locker room and staggered up to Foster, a hulking offensive lineman.

Looking disheveled in his Hawaiian shirt, ponytail and bushy mustache, Arch asked, “Roy, what the hell happened?” Dressed only in his skivvies, Foster looked Arch up and down and responded, “What’s your f—— problem?” To which Arch replied, “Hey, f— you.”

With that, Foster stood up ready to throw hands with Arch. Legendary Dolphins head coach Don Shula happened to be walking by, broke up the near skirmish and summoned both to his office, like a principal. This must have been a sight: arguably the greatest coach in football history scolding one large barely clothed black man and one large half-drunk white man like they were two misbehaving middle school students.

The story gets better. Arch wrote a column about Foster for the next day’s paper. The headline? The Surly Side of Roy Foster.

All of Arch’s stories are funny. I’ll save the one about the time he was handcuffed by police at the Orange Bowl for another time. Thank you, Arch.

Thanks again to all of the guys who helped me publish a book. And thank you in advance to anyone willing to buy the thing.