"I Have a Dream!": A rather bold question about publishing + selection process

I entered the publishing business with a pretty similar mentality. From experience, it isn’t sustainable.

When publishing even an eBook, there are still many costs involved.

You still have to pay for your editor. I also use a proofreader on my books. There is a cover that must be created, plus the cost of any materials and software to create it. Someone has to typeset / format the book to be published. Then there is the time to get it up on all of the distributor websites and your own (which also must be maintained).

Beyond that is the actual launch of the book, promotion costs, and administrative fees of just being in business. On top of that, I end up with authors who believe that their book should sell itself, don’t lift a finger to promote it, and then wonder why they don’t make any money.

Even though I do most of the work, I honestly don’t get paid the effort that I put in and hardly ever recoup my investment.

This is why I am a HUGE proponent of self-publishing. Instead of me being the person assuming all of the risk, the authors are the ones who must make the decision on whether or not to help themselves.

And since I love working with people who are motivated and want to be successful, it is a huge WIN for me 🙂

So if you are looking to help other authors get their work out there into the world and have them help you at the same time, I would recommend some sort of Indie co-op or a cartel.

It sounds like a blogging network. That’s essentially what WordPress/Tumblr/Medium/Blogger/etc is. You’re allowing everyone to publish. They just have to write it and hit post. Of course, all of these do some kind of curation. WordPress has “Freshly Pressed,” Medium has their newsletter, Tumblr has their social network. But the community does most of the curating, not the staff.

In other words, you’re building a platform. And then letting other people publish on it. (Which is what Story Cartel is, btw.)

I think if you can figure out how to do it without running into the problems Angie’s talking about, you should! You’ll essentially be the chief of your own Cartel, and there’s so much power in that, not to mention the joy of helping your fellow writers.

BUT (and this is a big but) how will this distract you from your core focus of writing? And are you avoiding your writing by elevating the writing of others?

I think you should do it, but only if you’ve fully looked at the costs and found them to be worth it. We creative types sometimes get grand visions but then get overwhelmed when it takes too much to maintain. This could potentially take a huge amount of maintenance.