Anatomy of Gone?

I recently made the decision to remove my self published collection of short stories Anatomy of Fear from amazon.com. The reason for this is two-fold.

The initial intent of this project was to promote my forthcoming novel People of the Ethereal Realm, which was supposed to be released this year from Twisted Library Press. Included with the short stories was a three-chapter preview that I hoped would entice readers to buy the book when it came out. Well, due to the recent inactivity at TLP, my contract expired, and PotER is now without a publisher. That was one reason I decided to pull Anatomy of Fear.

The other reason I decided to pull the plug was that, as it turns out, I am no fan of self publishing my material. I knew this going in, but I figured I would give it a shot anyway, more for promotional purposes than anything else. It didn't do all that great. Looking at the sales figures, it did all right during the period that I promoted it, which was only for about two weeks. As soon as I stopped promoting the book, the sales dropped off, which is to be expected. If no one knows a book is out, how the hell are they going to buy it?

For the most part, I'm finished with self publishing. I believe I did it the right way--I had an editor edit the material, and I created a decent cover--but it's just not my cuppa tea. I may do this sort of thing again for the strict purpose of promoting a novel in the future...or maybe not.

That being said, there are a lot of established authors who are self publishing their backlog, and that seems to be working out great for some of them. I'm nowhere near that established an author, but perhaps in the future I will consider that option.

Until next time...