I’ve been following the book publishing industry for many, many years. So I know about the difficulties in finding an agent or a book publisher who wants to publish your book.
In 1992 the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION that I co-wrote with Rabbi Karen L. Fox was published by Perigee, an imprint of Putnam. Karen and I had to do most of the promoting ourselves.
Thus I was not deterred when, in April 2008, I self-published my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT through BookSurge, then a division of Amazon that has now been folded into CreateSpace. I expected to do the promotion no matter who published the novel. (And an extra plus was that MRS. LIEUTENANT had just been named a semi-finalist in the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.)
Now it is July 2010 and I have decided to use my self-publishing knowledge to share other material that I’ve written that hasn’t been bought: four comedy screenplays (two of which I wrote with my husband).
True, there may not be very many people interested in reading unknown comedy screenplays. But the point is that I’ve taken control of my own material. And CreateSpace makes it very easy to self-publish.
I’ve just okayed the proof of the book and it is now available on CreateSpace — it will be available on Amazon in a couple of weeks. And whether anyone buys the book, I still feel very good that I took four stories that I truly love — and am providing the opportunity for other people to fall in love with them.
This is definitely an opportunity that wasn’t available with the screenplays only stored on my computer!
If you want to read loglines of the four screenplays, you can do so now.
And I hope this blog post will encourage others who have manuscripts stored on their computers to take control in their own hands by considering self-publishing.
(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of the novel MRS. LIEUTENANT, the co-author of SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION, and the co-author and author of FOUR COMEDY SCREENPLAYS.
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