How to Manage Your Self-publishing Project

Author Hank Quense talking Marketing Plans for Self-published Books and How to Manage Your Self-publishing Project. A Paul Collins interview.

Tell us about your background. Who you are, where you are from?
I’m an author. I write humorous and satiric scifi and fantasy stories. I’ve had over fifty short stories published along with four novels and three collections of stories. I also lecture on fiction writing and self-publishing.  I live in New Jersey about fifteen miles west of Manhattan, the center of the cultural universe (according to the people in Manhattan, not me). My wife, Pat, and I like to travel and we often vacation in a nearby galaxy or parallel world.

My first two books were published by a small indie publisher. That impressed me so much I self-published my next book. After that I established my own imprint Strange Worlds Publishing.

What themes does your book explore and what do you hope the readers will take away from the experience? Is there a particular feeling or experience that you hope to evoke for the reader?
My fiction works often explore Tunnel Vision, the ability of humans (and aliens as well as fantasy creatures) to selectively interpret what just happened. I often have a major plot event occur and then have two or three characters misconstrue the event in wildly differently interpretations. This selective differences can produce a lot of conflict and humor.

What prompted you to be an author and did you have a specific inspiration in mind? Were you influenced by a certain person, artist, or genre?
I’ve always been able to write well. I decided to write fiction as a second career on my fiftieth birthday and I chose to write humor and satire. I refuse to write serious fiction: there is too much of it around without me adding to the pile. I think the biggest influencers on my writing have been Terry Prachett and Douglas Adams although a portion of the blame has to go to Tom Holt.

Tell us about your latest work and what inspired you.
During my lectures on self-publishing and while attending local writing groups, I realized there is a wealth of ignorance and confusion about what is involved in self-publishing a book. And the situation is even worse when it comes to marketing a book. Because these new authors aren’t familiar with the publishing and marketing processes, they are open to get ripped off by the many scam artists who prey on these authors with “service offerings” that do nothing except steal money from the authors. I decided to do something about it. My solution is a series of Self-publishing Guides. Two of the books are available now.

Marketing Plans for Self-published Books was released on September 15, and Manage Your Self-publishing Project has been available for a while. Self-publishing a Book is scheduled for release on November 15 and Business Basics for Authors is due early next year. Taken together, the guides will allow a new author to understand the joint processes and to protect themselves from the scammers.

If you could compare your book to any other existing works, which ones would it be and why?
One of my observations on the available books on publishing and marketing books is this. The publishing books don’t discuss marketing and the marketing books don’t mention publishing. It’s as if publishing and marketing are two separate issues. That’s not true. The two can’t be separated. Further the two processes are not serial activities. Marketing has to begun during the publishing process. That’s what Manage Your Self-publishing Project does. It takes the publishing and marketing processes and melds them into an integrated project using flow charts to manage and control the processes.

How can your readers contact you? Or buy your books?
Readers can visit my publishing site Strange Worlds Online and my blog. On the Strange Worlds Online site, all of my books have buy links to the major book sellers such as Kindle, Smashwords, IStore and others.

Thanks for taking the time for this interview. All the best!
Thanks for having me…