Jessica Park, Author[2]“I love the manuscript, but…”

It seems those words, expressed in a publisher rejection notice, tend to herald one writer after another’s ventures into self-publishing. In this case, Jessica Park, guest-blogging on Elizabeth Spann Craig’s “Mystery Writing is Murder” blog, explains why she took her young-adult novel Flat-Out Love to Amazon self-publishing, where it has sold over 75,000 copies and received 372 reviews averaging 4.6 stars. Park had previously published a five-book murder mystery series through a traditional publisher.

The problems with Flat-Out Love, Park was told by the publishers who rejected it, were that the 18-year-old college freshman heroine was too old for a young-adult novel and too young for an adult-adult novel, and also that the book had no vampires in it. Even the ones who said her book was wonderful and it really “resonated” with them told her they couldn’t use it for those reasons.

This all seemed silly to me. Am I the only person to have written a book about a college freshman? It’s such a pivotal time in life. Why is this age so shunned in the publishing industry? Flat-Out Love is a unique story, but very often publishers don’t want unique. They don’t want to take on what they consider to be a “risk.” They want as close to a “guaranteed” bestseller as possible.

So, although she really hated having to promote her own book, Park knew she had an audience and the book “deserved to be published.” So she went the Amazon route and as a result has made “a lot more” money from Flat-Out Love than she made on her previous five books for a large publishing house.

I obviously can’t guarantee these numbers for every self-published book, but even if you sell a fraction of this, you can still earn good money. I’ve put up one other full-length novel, RELATIVELY FAMOUS, and three e-shorts, and I have zero regrets. Like anything, self-publishing is a learning process, but once you get the hang of it, it’s plenty of fun.

Park writes that she currently has no plans to seek publication through a New York publisher again. She finds that it is simpler and easier to self-publish, and she also has more editorial freedom about what she writes.

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3 COMMENTS

  1. Great story, I love it when someone is successful and willing to take a chance on independence. This ‘it’s not fitting in what we need’ problem is just another example of traditional publishing not looking for opportunities in the new world.
    What if they said, “Hey this is great but we need to find a new market for it. Let’s find a way to bring our strengths together to find your readers.”

    I hope she continues to sell well.

  2. Traditional publishing is Corporate publishing. Everything is done by commitee. Everything has to be approved by executives who are judged by some “measure” of performance. Everybody plays it safe and nobody wants to rock the boat.

    “Young Adult” is a strange category. Massive numbers of older people read so-called Young Adult fiction. Weren’t those Twilight books supposed to be Young Adult? I’ve seen dozens of 30-something women reading those. Besides I’ve read plenty of “adult” books where the hero is a kid. So who says that smart young readers wouldn’t read a book where the hero is an old guy, for instance?

    I don’t think Corporate Publishing has a single clue about what people really are excited to read. They just know how to churn out more of what sold well six months ago. That’s why it’s wonderful to see a story like this where an author leaves the constraints of big publishers and goes directly to the readers.

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