my first video interview, a follow-up!

Glad so many people found my interview helpful! I would like to thank Tricia, who was an excellent interviewer.

As for why I did it, it was for the same reason I started my podcast and wrote STORYTELLING: HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL.

I’ve been self-publishing for ten years now and am working on novel #120, and while there are people who have been self-publishing longer than I have, there aren’t all that many, and there are even fewer people who started that long ago and are still going. So I have a lot of experience at this point, and the podcast and the interview were a good way to share it with people without getting pushy in the process.

Additionally, as I said in the interview, it’s often useful to write non-fiction from a beginner’s perspective because there are always beginners coming into the field who are looking for a place to start. Like, there are always going to be people who are just getting started with the Linux command line, and there are a lot of people who are just getting started with self-publishing. So I hope the interview and the podcast helps them out.

Also, self-publishing attracts a lot of scammers. This isn’t unique to self-publishing – traditional publishing abounded with scams, such as fee-charging agents and shifty vanity presses, and even “legitimate” publishers and agents did a lot of shady things. (One of the most famous examples is FIGHT CLUB author Chuck Palahniuk, whose agency cheated him out a lot of money, and there are numerous other instances like this.) So, I hope resources like my podcast can convince new writers that 1.) you can self-publish for free (minus costs like cover design, editing, and your laptop), and 2.) if someone offers you something like a “publishing package” where they’ll publish your book for you for $699 or $1699, run away.

Finally, thanks to everyone for reading! It’s nice that after ten years and 119 books, I still get emails asking when the next one will come out. 🙂

-JM