How cool is this? I chose the photograph and colored and shadowed it to my liking. I chose the font, the size, the colors, everything. Now, had I been under the thumb of a publisher or an agent, I may not have had the freedom to do as I chose with my own work, but because there is this fantastic, creative life form called smashwords.com, I was able to invest into my work 100% of myself.
There isn't a person in the world that doesn't have a story to tell and they want to tell it their way, show it their way, reveal it their way and at smashwords.com you can. You don't need a publisher, you ARE the publisher, you don't need an agent, you ARE the agent, you don't need a creative/artistic designer, you ARE the creative/artistic designer. However, if you feel you need these additions to guide you through your work, they are available to you.
E-books really are the wave of the future and that wave of the future is kind of taking a tumble back to the past when writers didn't need agents and could work one on one with the publisher. Today, the writer now has the opportunity to be the publisher as well.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying agents and publishers are not needed. They most definitely are. But in this day and age, agents and publishers only want writers with a "platform". What is a platform? In a nutshell, a platform will promise your publisher and agent that you've got a strong steady, worldwide following that will ensure the agent and publisher are going to make money off of your fruits.
In fact, in this era many publishers will not give advances to even well established writers and use what money would normally have been an advance toward marketing the book. Well, what chance do most of us have when our platform reaches across the street or maybe in town or maybe even a thread across the country? It isn't enough to garner the attention of agents and pubs.
I would love an agent and a publisher and I DO have a bit of a platform having been on the Oprah Show, ET, the Food Network, and other shows and countless radio programs across the world.
So, what's the hold up for me, you might ask? My platform isn't big enough. Now, even being at smashwords, if the right agent or pub popped up, I'd go with them. But until that happens, the smashwords site is priceless.
This is why this site is so unbelievably wonderful: anybody can write a book and anybody that goes to the site can read whatever kind of book you can imagine by people just like you and me. Very creative people who probably won't have the chance to get an agent or pub to notice them, but just might now that there is a site devoted to the creative writing endeavors of the normal Joe like you and me. Even the highest paid celebrities were a normal Joe at some point in their lives.
Am I pushing smashwords.com. Yes, because I know so many people with a story to tell or several stories to tell and those stories can be read by hopefully millions of people with the right marketing tools. Those marketing tools are my next step in figuring out how to get my books out to the public.
Mark Coker, founder and creator of smashwords.com has that all prepared, too. He's written a book-marketing guide that I just downloaded today. Oh, and all of the information Mark gives you is free - absolutely free.
Enough for today, but check out http://smashwords.com/profile/view/margauxsky and check out a free sampling of my book Beautiful Dead Bella - A Lana Cloud Murder Mystery. Then, buy it!
And write on and on and on and on and forevermore.
