Owed To Joy

Owed To Joy

There can be a pretty low downside to being an independent author: You feel rejected, because you have been rejected, by agents and publishers.

Your bank account might have -ve signs in front of your earnings. You have an increasingly difficult time telling people what you do for a living.

BUT, the benefits are huge.

Here’re eleven that came to mind this morning, when I finally woke up after sleeping in late:

1. You can sleep in late.
2. In your story, you can do whatever you want to whomever you want, and no one tells you it can’t be done.
3. You can be an author and still make time to work at another job, where you can no doubt make more money than you ever would if you were only an author. If you were working for a mainstream publisher they’d have you on such an aggressive publishing schedule that you would hardly have time to do your laundry, let alone your best writing
4. You don’t have to go to book signings in places like West Overshoe, Nebraska because your agent found a bookstore there that has 5 copies of your book for sale.
5. You can call your book whatever you want, even put your own picture on the front cover if that sort of self-promotion appeals to you.
6. You can churn out new material at your own pace, and more importantly, in your own style. Use adverbs, or don’t use adverbs – no editor’s going to tell you they’re forbidden
7. Your friends and family will be inspired to follow their own paths in this world because they see, maybe for the first time, that it’s a possible and joyful experience.
8. You can make the world you create a better place – find justice, truth, love, mercy – everything that is so lacking in real life.
9. There are umpteen different ways to get you and your work “out there” and no one tells you how or when to do it.
10. You can find a worldwide audience faster than you ever could selling through the bricks-and-mortar channels that are the major vehicles of mainstream publishers.
11. And…if you still want a mainstream publisher – and you find one that wants you – and if you decide that’s the way you want to go – you’ll have more leverage, more power, more of a voice, and less angst in that relationship, because you’ll know that you can always go back to being an indie writer and get to sleep in late.

Here’s an afterthought. I used the word “joyful” in number 6 above. Lately, I’ve realized that not only does writing bring joy to my life, but joy brings writing to my life as well. And I’ll bet that’s true for all of you who are writers, no matter who publishes your work.