Double Nickels: My Journey Into Self-Publishing

By Cassie Selleck

Double nickels. Fifty-five. That’s the age I was when I quit my full-time job marketing for a bridge access equipment company, and enrolled in Goddard College’s low-residency undergraduate program. It’s also the age I was when I could, for the first time in the more than half a century I have been alive, list my profession as “Writer” on legal forms. And speaking of nickels, if I had one of those coins for every time I was told I should not go into writing if I expected to make a living at it…well, let’s just say I’d have more nickels than that particular advice was worth.

I’m a writer, the author of a book that is barely a novel, but that has created a passive income more than twice what I’ve made in any of my other careers. If you ask my eighty-year-old mother, she’d say, “It’s about damn time.” She’s like that: blunt, sassy, irreverent. The persimmon didn’t fall far from that tree.

Some people say my success is a fluke. Who self-publishes and makes a living at it? Others have actually said, “Don’t be disappointed if you don’t have the same results with your next novel.” Okay, I won’t. I had no expectations for The Pecan Man, so it would have been hard to be disappointed. I was surprised by its success, in fact, and I continue to be delighted by sales that grow exponentially, but my question is this: Was it a fluke, or was it just an opportunity not wasted?

But this blog is not about me. It’s about you. Yes, you. I want to tell you a secret that some people don’t want you to know. Ready?

It. Is. Possible.

Oh, wait, here’s another one:

It isn’t too late.

I’m on a roll.

It doesn’t cost a fortune, and you don’t have to settle for royalties that net you less than 15% of your list price while other folks make three times that much on your work.  

There has never been a better time, nor a more legitimate opportunity to earn a living as a writer. There are many affordable, some virtually free, self-publishing services that offer user-friendly tools to independently publish digital books, or print-on-demand services for paperback books. Are you guaranteed to make big bucks? Nope. But guess how much you’ll make on your novel, your memoir, your poetry if they are naught but files in your computer’s ever-expanding belly?

I had just two items on my bucket list a few years back. Who had time for a bucket list when I had been raising children since 1976 and had just sent my youngest off to college? I barely had time to breathe, much less dream about things I wanted to do before I kicked the proverbial bucket. So, when my husband and I talked about what we would do if we ever won the lottery he plays faithfully every week, my answer would always be:

1. Finish my college degree.
2. Publish a novel.

I’d been working on both for over ten years. I know, I’m a little slow. Slow like the tortoise who beat the hare.

I published The Pecan Man in January of 2012. And by March 2014, #2 had made #1 possible. I cannot imagine being where I am today without the success of my self-published novel. I am well on my way to completing Goddard’s BFA in Creative Writing program – the only low-residency program of its kind in the U.S., I am a co-editor of fiction for Goddard’s outstanding online literary journal DUENDE, and I get up each day and walk to my desk to write. I have an agent who found me, not the other way around. I have speaking engagements on my calendar, and have met astounding people I might never have come across if not for a shared love of reading and writing. I am living a writer’s life, something I dreamed of since I was a child.

I wish this success on all artists and writers. I hope we all make it. I hope we stop telling each other we must starve for our art. It’s not true; we must work for it. We must make it available in one or more of the many ways possible in today’s market. With countless online outlets and the rapid popularity of social media, consumers have grown incredibly savvy and have the skills necessary to find the material they want to read. If you take the time to write, edit and publish good poetry and prose, there is an audience out there waiting to find you.

Is self-publishing the only way? No. Is it the best way? Not always. Does it spell doom for local bookstores? I don’t think so. But it is one way of getting your foot in the door, of finding an audience, of having a large pool of beta-readers, of attracting an agent if you want one. It can even increase your chance of becoming traditionally published if that’s what your heart has always desired. For me, it wasn’t about having a big name on the spine of my book. It was about writing a story that bound hearts, and discovering a world where my voice was welcome and appreciated.

So, what are you waiting for? Go find your audience.

You can purchase Cassie's book, The Pecan Man, here.

Reinvigorating Your Writing Practice for the New Year

By Catherine Chambers

I don’t know about you, friend, but 2014 was a trial by fire for my loved ones and me. I’m sorry to say that I went weeks without picking up a book, without writing down a single word. However, in the midst of post-holiday wintertime blues, I find there is nothing more comforting than a story, read or told. The question is: why is it so difficult to keep it up during hard times? For creative types (a generally sensitive bunch), the littlest thing can set us off. I once didn’t read an assignment for a week because there was snow outside and my kitchen was dirty. To be honest, this year, my writing suffered, but I’m determined to change that.

Personally, I think people aim too high when it comes to New Year’s resolutions. My motto: Keep it Simple. Setting realistic goals you can accomplish will feel much better than drinking kale juice every day for a month only to go on a donut binge. If I can overcome cleaning a three-day-old crusted-over crock-pot, you can overcome too! We can do it together in three easy steps.     

Step 1: Practice.

From writing, to yoga, to business analysis, everything we do as humans takes practice. Make writing (even if it’s an especially witty grocery list or a diary entry) a part of your life every day. To take an example from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, sitting down to write your magnum opus after a hiatus is like saying, “I can go for a run today because I stretched last week.” I’ve been particularly bad about this one lately. The stress of moving, finances, the holidays, its all added up. 2015 will be about overcoming my outer problems and easing the pain with writing every day. Granted, sometimes sitting down to write will be a pain, but as one of my fellow editors pointed out, sometimes art is hard.

Step 2: Stop Caring About What Everyone Thinks.

Trust yourself when it comes to your work. Not everything you write is a gem, but what matters is getting it out. If you don’t get your work onto the page, how are you supposed to pick through it to see what can get shined up?

Another of my favorite Goldberg-isms is, “You should listen to what people say. Take in what they say… Then make your own decision. It is your [writing] and your voice.” Personally, I struggle a great deal with putting my writing out in the world whether for peers to read, submitting for publication, or even just letting my partner take a glance at it. It’s like sending my child go off to kindergarten only to worry about bullies taking her lunch money.

People have opinions and they love to share them, but it doesn’t mean you have to listen. The same thing goes for your ego. Don’t listen to that jerk, either. The societal anxieties you picked up as a child, the need to please and be perfect, none of that has a place in your writing practice. Writing is not a good profession for prideful people. Rejection letters paper our inbox, we work mundane jobs to pay the bills, but we press on. Always press on.

Step 3: Be Present.

This is important. Take deep breaths. Go out barefoot in the snow just to see what it feels like. Document every little thing that you see and love and feel. Observe your world as it’s happening to you. Pull an Anne Lamott and carry an index card in your back pocket in case of emergency poetry. Say yes to reinvigorating your writing practice one day at a time. If you skip a day or two, don’t beat yourself up, just get back to it and write. Truth is, in creating you will find your solace.

No Silent Night

By Jørn Earl Otte

The holidays, however you may define them, will soon be upon us, and for too many in America, they will be spending those holidays in the shadows of grief and loss. Where I live, in the heart of Appalachia, while the tree-covered mountains have long since lost the robust colors of autumn, the houses throughout my neighborhood are covered in glittering lights, and as the old song says, “in the air, there’s a feeling of Christmas.”

Like many writers that I respect and admire, for me, there is a feeling in the air that has very little to do with the so-called joy of the season. Depression encroaches upon the heart of the melancholic writer as much as the eggnog, and turkey, and gift-giving seem to do. For those who suffer through this dark time, the anxiety, sadness, and grief they must deal with comes from a variety of places – memories of loved ones who died too soon, struggles with illnesses, divorce, financial difficulty, or a myriad of other issues. I have experienced depression through the holidays for many of those reasons, and in other years I have celebrated, and enjoyed the positive feelings synonymous with this time of year.

This year, however, I am faced with a depression that comes from a different place. It comes from a growing anger, sadness, frustration, and bewilderment I have at the way my country is treating its own citizens of color. As a white male who is perfectly aware that I come from a place of privilege, I feel the need to speak up, and acknowledge that my country is sick, and I am sick with it, and I don’t know the cure.

The written word is what I know, and it is all that I know, and it has brought me comfort before during the darkest times. So what to do? Some of the people who are near and dear to my heart don’t have the same kinds of conversations with their children as I have with mine. I have a 15-year-old daughter and a nearly 10-year-old son. Never once have I had to tell them how to behave if confronted by an armed police officer. But people I love have to coach their children in ways that I can’t imagine, and then they have to pray every single day that their child will make it home alive.  

So again I ask, what to do? At times, I feel helpless, but I also know that I am privileged to have the opportunity to make a choice – I can either speak up, or I can be silent. Thankfully, I am both a writer, and an editor on the staff of a progressive literary magazine so I can speak up in multiple ways.

Writer and blogger Nancy Arroyo Ruffin wrote on her website recently that “Everyone agrees that there is injustice going on, and while some protest or burn down businesses to release their rage— as an artist, as a writer, I do the only thing I know how. I write. I read. I try and educate myself and others and then I write some more. My art is the only weapon I have. My words are how I fight back because in the end my words are all I have.”

I have suffered some of the worst that depression can bring – I have drowned the thoughts in alcohol, I have laughed in the eye of the storm, I have wrestled with the Almighty, and I have stared down the demons who wished me to end it all. In the end, I have found the most solace in the written word – both my own, and the works of others. Ruffin is spot-on. I can only use words to fight this battle. Whether they are the words of others (William Styron’s Darkness Visible, which chronicles his descent into the darkest worlds of depression, helped me come to a greater understanding of my own battle) or my own words, words are all I have.

Being a part of the staff of Duende during this time of year, I have found another weapon in this battle, and that is the wonderful opportunity to read amazing works from writers spanning the globe and representing such beauty and diversity that I can scarcely take it all in. But I will take it in, and then I will share it with the world in the virtual pages of Duende. For I have taken a solemn vow around a table of my peers in a small building in a remote college campus – to help make a literary magazine that reflects “the true beauty and diversity of the U.S. literary ecosystem.”

I am reminded of the words of the German Protestant pastor and anti-Nazi activist Martin Niemöller, who wrote, “In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

So as an editor and writer, I speak. I hope that my words and my choices can make some small millimeter of awareness and change in this violent American landscape. I hope that my fellow privileged white brothers and sisters will take a moment to reflect upon what is happening to our black and brown countrymen, and then, on the Holy Silent Night, lift up a silent prayer to whomever they believe hears such things, and then raise a loud voice to the people in power who can enact meaningful change.

Despite my growing frustration and anger at the country I live in, despite my sadness and fear for my brothers and sisters who have more melanin in their skin than I do, and despite the depression that has constantly and consistently for multiple reasons afflicted me each and every winter – dammit, I still love Christmas. And perhaps what I love about it most of all is the fact that it reminds me, at the most basic level, that we are to love one another. As a father, I love my children and can help them to be better members of society by raising them to love people of all colors, creeds, sexual orientations, religions, and so forth. As a writer, I can speak out about atrocities that are a disease in my country. As an editor, I can make a conscious effort to showcase the talents of people who are otherwise marginalized in the literary landscape. As a human being, I can give hugs, I can share food, and I can shout for joy and shout in protest. What I cannot do, what I must never do, is be silent, no matter how holy the occasion.