One of the advantages of being in the Writers Guild is that you get to join some awesome writers groups online. One such place is Writers Action BBS. It's a fascinating place where writers of all ilks, skill levels and success go to whine and complain about being writers.
I've been on it for years now and in the last few months there's been a lot of talk about this new Amazon Kindle self-publishing deal. For years I've heard and read about vanity publishing, where you paid someone to publish your book for you. And I've heard and read that they are basically scams. But this seemed different. Then one of the writers at the BBS, Christiana Miller, had dived into the Kindle pool and found it very exciting. She was involved with an anthology and then took one of her stories and turned it into a Kindle book and published it at Amazon. And from all accounts her book, "Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead," is doing remarkably well. She was so excited by the the Amazon program that she started talking it up. And started posting links. And giving advice. And really making such a notion sound feasible. And that's when I started getting antsy.
My success has been limited. I'm not admitting anything that isn't acutely true. I'm picking up a few bucks writing jokes for angry pundits or getting a piece in Reader's Digest. Or getting really excited about a staged reading of a script or too excited about joining a workshop only to see it go into hiatus. At one point I actually had business cards printed to hand out at these things. But I digress---I was going to have to do something proactive. The day job was a joke. My script had made the semi-finals of a contest, only to fall short of making the finals. I couldn't get any interest in my newest script. The WGA demoted me to
"stand-by." My manager quit the business. Even the angry pundit felt my jokes weren't angry enough.
Things were bottoming out. Writing scripts and sending out queries was the equivalent of putting messages in bottles and tossing them in the ocean.
I was going to need a bigger bottle.
I've been on it for years now and in the last few months there's been a lot of talk about this new Amazon Kindle self-publishing deal. For years I've heard and read about vanity publishing, where you paid someone to publish your book for you. And I've heard and read that they are basically scams. But this seemed different. Then one of the writers at the BBS, Christiana Miller, had dived into the Kindle pool and found it very exciting. She was involved with an anthology and then took one of her stories and turned it into a Kindle book and published it at Amazon. And from all accounts her book, "Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead," is doing remarkably well. She was so excited by the the Amazon program that she started talking it up. And started posting links. And giving advice. And really making such a notion sound feasible. And that's when I started getting antsy.
My success has been limited. I'm not admitting anything that isn't acutely true. I'm picking up a few bucks writing jokes for angry pundits or getting a piece in Reader's Digest. Or getting really excited about a staged reading of a script or too excited about joining a workshop only to see it go into hiatus. At one point I actually had business cards printed to hand out at these things. But I digress---I was going to have to do something proactive. The day job was a joke. My script had made the semi-finals of a contest, only to fall short of making the finals. I couldn't get any interest in my newest script. The WGA demoted me to
"stand-by." My manager quit the business. Even the angry pundit felt my jokes weren't angry enough.
Things were bottoming out. Writing scripts and sending out queries was the equivalent of putting messages in bottles and tossing them in the ocean.
I was going to need a bigger bottle.
