Comments on: Why I Won’t Pursue a Publisher for The Query-Free Freelancer

By: Jennifer Mattern

Jennifer Mattern — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:38:19 +0000

Yeah, the idea of that made me very uncomfortable. If the platform helps me land something else in another topic area, by all means I’m fine with that. But blatantly pitching the first one when the whole premise is that writers don’t have to do that in the freelance world just feels a bit skeazy to me.

By: Carol Tice

Carol Tice — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:38:38 +0000

Have to agree, given your book’s concept, querying publishers or agents about it doesn’t seem like a good fit! Can’t wait to see it. Maybe I can swap you for my Make a Living Writing e-book, which I’m hoping to get out next month!

By: Cyndi L

Cyndi L — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:58:16 +0000

Part of my reasoning is that each chapter is pretty long…as long as some complete e-books that I’ve seen, but mostly because my stuff is so photo intensive. The first chapter is an introduction, and it includes all the basics someone needs to get started. Each additional chapter makes reference to the first but goes in a new direction introducing new materials and techniques.

I make it sound like dozens are done, but right now I’m only working on chapter 3! It’s just that it’s been living in my head for quite awhile :-)

Help yourself to a copy of the free chapter if you’d like: I don’t know that you’re particularly interested in bead embroidery, but you can still see how I’m structuring it if you’re interested. Just promise me you won’t laugh at my first attempt!
http://www.beading-arts.com/p/e-books.html

By: Jennifer Mattern

Jennifer Mattern — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:16:19 +0000

That’s actually an interesting approach. I do plan to release one or more free chapters here to entice people to buy the book and I might offer an e-book version as well, but hadn’t thought about selling a chapter at a time for e-book-only releases. :)

By: Cyndi L

Cyndi L — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:41:20 +0000

Thanks for the suggestion. I’m doing the e-book thing rather than POD. It seemed like the best choice because of the heavy heavy photo content of each of my chapters. I released the first chapter free as an introduction, and each additional chapter is very inexpensive. When they are all finished (who knows when that will be…), I’ll look into bundling them.

By: Jennifer Mattern

Jennifer Mattern — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:33:18 +0000

Well, a big part of the rights issues for me is that b/c I’m looking at the nonfiction book as an entrepreneurial endeavor, I already have a lot of product, service, and other ideas in my head to increase earnings. And the risk of losing any of that potential due to working with a traditional publisher is not an option for me.

And don’t worry about not having a similar background. There is plenty of great info out there on self-publishing. I adore Peter Bowerman’s Well-Fed Self Publisher for example, and I’m sure I’ll be turning to that a lot in my process (not choosing the POD route in my case), and hopefully he’ll let me pick his brain again when the time comes as he so often has in the past. Check his book out. :)

By: Cyndi L

Cyndi L — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:28:30 +0000

Although I’ve published plenty of work in other people’s books (guest chapters, special projects, etc) and have written for magazines for a long time, when I finally began to put my book together, I chose to self-publish. I don’t have the background that you have, Jenn, and I know that I’ll be making a lot of mistakes, but at least they are my mistakes to make. That feels better to me than to sign away rights that I didn’t even know I *should* be protecting.