The Insecure Writer’s Support Group Monthly Blog for January 2022

Welcome to the first blog post for the IWSG for 2022. I’m sure many of you, like me, hoped that things would be back to some semblance of normal by now, but Mother Nature and her friends the COVID 19 virus variants still have us by the short hairs. Christmas and New Year’s Eve were once more disrupted, and for many the emotional strain of worrying is taking its toll. For my New Year’s resolution, I made a decision to focus on one positive thing each day. Today’s positive? The Christmas decorations have been taken down and the cleaning ladies are here to restore order to the house.

Each month I try to respond to the topic question presented. This month the January 5 question is- What’s the one thing about your writing career you regret the most? Were you able to overcome it?

As Frank Sinatra sang, “regrets I’ve had a few,” but who hasn’t? The biggest one has to be getting involved with small traditional publishing houses, two of which ended up being run by crooks, while another couldn’t handle the time and costs and had to fold. She did things properly, and I didn’t lose any money. Unfortunately, the main publisher I was with, the one where things were really going well, screwed us all by selling out to one of the big boys. You would think that would be a good thing, but the big company only wanted one thing, and that was to destory the smaller one along with the writers in its stable. I went from healthy quarterly cheques to infintesimal amounts, the books ridiculously priced and absolutely nothing done to promote them. I tried promoting them myself at my expense, but since they took the lion’s share of the royalties, it wasn’t worth it. Some of the writers were able to bounce back and find other publishers, many just stopped writing, and that was a great loss.

When I was given the option of getting my rights back, and believe me, that was easier said than done with the unscrupulous publishers, I did, but the old “once bitten, twice shy” adage was never far from my mind. One by one, I revised and edited each of my previously published books and then self-published them. All I can say is thank goodness I didn’t have to rely on my writing to support me, since the climb back up into the marketplace was a long, slow one. Gradually, I wrote new material and self-published it, but it’s taken me five years to get my groove back. My sales and pages read improved greatly in 2021, the numbers surpassing my best ones in the early years, and I’m hoping that trend continues.

So, what did I learn? Not to trust traditional publishing. It’s as simple and as complex as that. I refuse to submit any of my books to any house ever again. Will I regret this? Maybe in the long run, but for now, no one is cheating me out of anything, and I’m comfortable with that.

How about you?

Check out other answers here: https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html