... It wasn't as good as the dream the other night where I had a farm in the country and kept chickens, but in it I was talking to someone about my writing career and I said to them, "Until I've been published traditionally and seen my book in a bookshop, I won't feel like I've succeeded as a writer."

And I woke up and was like, holy crap, that's true.

And now I'm confused.

Six months into the self-publishing experiment, I'm no clearer than I was back in January as to how I feel about it. I've had a good month this month, but I'm not actually making any money yet. Reading around, it's easy to find success stories from self-published authors. It's the ones doing well who are talking the loudest, which is fair enough, but I think it creates this false illusion that self-publishing is easy, financially rewarding, and creatively satisfying.

I'm not sure if that's true for me. I don't like structure, but I need it to function with any degree of efficiency. The structure, say, that's provided by working to deadlines with editors and cover artists. Left to my own devices, I become incredibly unfocused, I start too many projects and finish none of them, and then I feel bad about myself and decide I'm doomed.

So I've made a decision. WILD is staying where it is until the end of the year at least. That gives it six months in the indie market. It had a good first month and hopefully word of mouth will kick in. I tried getting WILD published traditionally and there were no takers, so I don't see any harm in keeping it out there. People are buying it, hopefully they will also read it and have an opinion on it. I'll also self-publish the two sequels.

The short stories (UNGRATEFUL DEAD, PAINLESS, THE BARKING OF DOGS) will stay where they are. I honestly don't care if I turn a profit from those or not; it's just supposed to be a nice, risk-free, low-cost way for people to find my work and maybe buy more if they like the short stories.

So, that leaves  NIGHT AND CHAOS. I'm in two minds about this. I love this story and I love the plans I have for the rest of it. But it hasn't really taken off. I can speculate as to why, but there's no way to be sure. So my two thoughts are either:

A) Take it off Amazon, rework it a little, and submit it as it is to epublishers. Carina accept previously self-published titles; I'm sure Damnation Books and Eternal Press do as well, and I think it would be a good fit for any of them.

or

B) Take it down, work it into a full-length novel and submit it around then. Agents, epubs, small presses... Wherever. I'd love to have some titles with Imajinn Books (this has been a secret dream of mine for years, ever since I discovered Keri Arthur and Lilith Saintcrow's titles there). I actually originally submitted AFTERLIFE to them, but they were in the process of moving offices at the time and I would have had to wait a year before I heard anything back, so decided to try elsewhere.

I'm leaning towards B. I don't think I'll get round to it this year, but I do think a full-length novel is what I want. I can work in what I've already written of Blood and Bones fairly easily, and frankly the more I think about it, the more I want to rewrite the end of NIGHT AND CHAOS anyway.

I'm going to reassess at the end of June (ooh, four whole days!), but I'm 90% certain I'll go with Plan B. Hopefully the good reviews NIGHT AND CHAOS has already had would impress/interest a publisher. So we'll see. I need to update my to-do list again now...