Book Reviews
IR Staff •
Jan 03, 2013 
In the recent interview IR did with Alan Sepinwall, we asked if there had been any interest in his book, “The Revolution was Televised”, from a traditional publisher.
Alan answered, “Yes, I tried to go the traditional route about a year ago. There wasn’t much interest at the time. I got one offer, but it seemed like a half-hearted one where the publisher didn’t seem to believe there’d be much of an audience for the book, and where they wanted something other than what I was pitching.
What a difference a year–and a glowing review in The New York Times makes.
As reported yesterday by Dave Itzkoff in his post, “Stay Tuned: A Self-Published Book About TV Gets a Major Publishing Pick-Up“, the best selling indie title was picked up by the Touchstone imprint of Simon & Schuster.
Touchstone is planning its release of “The Revolution Was Televised” shortly, with a paperback edition planned for the early spring and an e-book edition possibly coming earlier.
Things like this convince me even more that my best strategy is to edit my novel until it’s perfect, then self-publish and move on to the next novel. I have a job teaching, and I value it greatly. If my book is good enough, I have faith it will find its own (probably small) audience. I don’t want to waste time and energy crafting queries and trying to self-publicize.
I’m setting a goal of $2,000 profit on my first novel. I’ll move the goal post if I beat it. I’d rather get a small audience of happy readers than get an ego boost by getting traditionally published and risk not meeting their expectations for me.
I have the kids to mold and don’t expect to be lucky enough to hit it big. It’d be nice, but too many people are chasing the same dream.
An inspirational story for us indie-published authors!