My Publisher Quit on Me

Yes, I no longer have a publisher.

But this is how my year has gone thus far...

First of all, my third book in my vampire series (Vampire Nocturne), did not come out until some time in February of 2013—I had planned on if not by December of 2012, at least in January of 2013. (I was getting all sorts of dates from afore mentioned publisher... December or January)

Also, back when I thought I was getting edits for this book, I got what was considered a “final” product to approve of. (Eh, huh?) And in order to make sure my own edits were taken seriously, I had to redo the whole thing on a separate document, with all the needed changes, showing exactly what page and paragraph, and send to my publisher. I gather that these changes were done later on, because my book came out before I even finished these edits. (Harumph!)

Then, when it was out, sales were not coming through for this book. Why? Because I had scheduled host-posts during the months when I thought my book would be out (a few months prior). I could not plan anything with this publisher! So, I couldn't back track, if anyone was looking for this book back 2 or 3 months ago, and didn't find it, they must have moved on, or given up on it.

I did do a giveaway, which went really well. But you know, after a book comes out, and the excitement dies down, you find it gets harder and harder to find someone interested in your book. And this is third in a series. People who have not even found your first book won't be buying this one. The whole idea is that they discover your series and begin reading it. Or so it theoretically goes.

Well, yes I'm happy my publisher finally quit the biz. That news reached me some time in June. It was both a blessing and a curse.

A blessing because I was going to go Indie with the fourth book, and didn't know how I would approach him in order to do the other first books Indie too—in other words splitting up with him—and not having to raise the ire of a pure-bread German. Plus I wanted to keep my covers. The day he told me he was giving up the publishing business, I was relieved I wouldn't have to get into a sticky situation. I carefully and tactfully said nice things to him, and I was sincere—I was very happy to have had a publisher, at first. It boosted my morale (even if he was small fry), and other people seemed to respond to the fact I had a publisher in a very positive way. So, I asked if I could have my book covers. Yes. He said I could. I breathed a big sigh of relief.

A curse because I had lots of work to do, and I wanted to get the book I was working on at this time (Spell of the Black Unicorn), out this summer. I now had to work on reverting these three first books so as to get them up on Amazon.

But my work on going Indie had only just begun. He did send me his documents for each book (plus the covers), which he said he had used to put up on the various publishing sites, like Amazon and Smashwords. I looked at these documents and thought, “really?” I knew they would need to be reformatted. And even though he had said, “I'm here if you need me” I know how long that would take: forever!

Since I knew there were mistakes and countless things I needed to change, I went to work on them. For some reason I began with the second book. I simply found a whole bunch of things that needed changing and started there.