Newswire
Posted on December 22, 2013 at 12:00 AM by Jeffrey Bruner
Once upon a time, a young lady decided that the traditional route of releasing her work was too slow. Her name was Beyonce.
When her album was ready, Beyonce uploaded it to iTunes and made it available to everyone.
Instant happiness.
She sold more than 1 million units in just seven days and made a whole bunch more money than if she had only pressed CDs and distributed them to all the Big Box Stores in the universe.
"Wait a minute!" cried Target. "You can't do that!" shouted Amazon (ironically).
"You must still use us to distribute your music so that we can take an outrageous cut of the profits!" they yelled. "We will pout and hold our breath until you apologize!"
"Don't let the door hit ya where the Lord split ya," replied Beyonce. "Bye."
She left to go film her Super Bowl commercial for Pepsi, which did not care how Beyonce chose to distribute her music. And Beyonce lived happily ever after.
The end.
***
Do we call Beyonce a "self-published recording artist"? Of course not.
So stop letting people call you a "self-published author." It's a derogatory term used to imply inferiority. There are good and bad novels. There are good and bad authors. As long as you don't cut corners, and invest in professional editing and cover design, you will increase your chances of success -- regardless of whether it's you or your editor at Random House who uploads the final book to Amazon Kindle.
But never let others define you. Let your own actions do that!