What kind of self-publisher am I?

I was reading this old post on "The Book Designer" blog last week and decided to answer the question posed there by blogger Joel Friedlander: "What kind of self-publisher am I?"

He posits that there are two kinds of self-publishers. The first is "hobby publisher," someone who publishes for personal reasons and expects to spend money to publish, not make money. The second kind is "competitive self-publisher," someone who goes into it as a business, expects to make a profit, and will hire professionals to help.

Both types, he says, can be successful. You just have to know what "success" means for you.

I suppose I fall into category one. I feel fortunate that I don't need to make money at writing (I have a full-time job). I also can't afford to hire professionals to help me except in a very modest way (more about that below). What success means to me is to be able to hold in my hand a copy of my book that I can be proud of and that is available to anyone else who wants to read it.

I don't think this is an unreasonable wish for an author. Writing is an art and a craft. When other artists paint or draw or sculpt, they have their finished product in their hands when they are done. They can promote it, sell it, or hide it. Why should authors be different? Yes, authors have their manuscripts, but a manuscript is a very different thing from an actual book.

Sure, a lot of books and art is bad and unlikely to ever sell. But isn't that what the market is for--weeding things out? Galleries or publishers can be useful to artists/writers (and buyers) as filters and publicists, but I don't think it is unreasonable for any author to want to see their writing in actual book form, whether a traditional publisher wants it or not. In the end, consumers can vote with their cash if the book is out there and available.

Having labeled myself a hobby publisher, I still want to create the best book I can. I want it to be a great story, well laid-out, in an attractive cover. I may be an amateur, but I'm serious about this.

We pause now for some amateur artwork by one of my favorite artists. May I ever be such an amateur.

The Chess Game, by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1555. 

What have I done for my book this week? I have:

1) Edited some finicky stuff, e.g. use of  'til versus till. (Till won.) Also how to handle "..." One of my characters uses a lot of "..." when she talks, and I examined some published books to see how they handled it. Also cleaned up capitalization in titles such as "Your Majesty."

2) Cleaned up the "sections" in my manuscript. I didn't know there were such things as sections in MS Word until I started trying to create different headers for each chapter. The template I used from CreateSpace has each different part of the manuscript a different section, some of which I managed to blindly merge by backspacing while entering my chapters into the template. But since I wanted my headers to have the book title on the left and chapter titles on the right, I soon discovered that without manipulating the sections correctly, headers in one section applied to the whole book. This is now fixed, and every chapter has its own section and the correct headers.

3) Printed some pages to see how it actually looked on paper. Tried some different fonts and font sizes. Went back to my original. I may not be quite done playing with that.

4) Revised page one, that is, the writing. Page one has been my headache from day one. I've never been happy with it, but I almost am now. [loud cheers]

5) Wrote the first draft of my back cover blurb.

6) Started researching stock photography, looking for possible cover photos. I am encouraged to see that there is some stuff out there that might work, though my favorite wasn't free. This is one area where I might have to pay. Still, there are free photos out there and I haven't seen them all.

This week, I want to do some serious final editing, emphasis on final (well, until I see a proof copy). We'll see how that goes.