the first spark

Recently I saw a forum post from a new-ish writer asking about the “first spark” of indie writer excitement. Like, the first time you did something related to self-publishing and got excited by it.

I can totally remember that. It was April of 2011. At the end of 2010, I had decided to stop writing novels and look for other ways to occupy myself since I was sick of traditional publishing, so I was working full time and also working part time at a second job. However, I had learned about Kindle Direct Publishing and was figuring out how to use it. The part time job was winding down by then, so I had more hours free to read about KDP and self-publishing

Anyway, that April I decided to take a stab at it, so I published the first edition of THE UBUNTU BEGINNER’S GUIDE, and once I figured out how to convert a Word document to MOBI and EPUB, I also published DEMONSOULED. One weekend in April I spent a Saturday morning figuring how to publish DEMONSOULED to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords, since that was all that was available at the time. I set the book’s price at $0.99 USD.

That afternoon I went out and did some errands and came home, and checked my email before I made dinner. (This was years before I would buy my first smartphone.) I didn’t know it at the time, but Smashwords sends out a notification email whenever you sell a book, and while I had been doing errands, someone bought a copy of DEMONSOULED.

It had been years since I had made any money off DEMONSOULED – the advance for the obscure hardcover edition in 2005 was the last time I had made any money off the book.

“Huh,” thought I. “Perhaps there is more to this self-publishing thing than I expected. Perhaps I should write a third DEMONSOULED book so I have a trilogy. I’ll call it SOUL OF SOMETHING. Maybe SOUL OF SERPENTS?”

I have to admit, seven and a half years later, I still like getting those Smashwords emails!

-JM