Interview with David Seaman, Self-Published author

I ran into David Seaman when I was doing research on Lulu.com for my own publishing needs.  I found his review, then his page which led me to discover his large amount of self-published works.  I couldn't resist asking for an interview.

1) Tell us a bit about yourself.

I’m a (relatively) ordinary chap who enjoys writing and has been doing it for a number of years now.  I mainly write reviews and opinions pieces on my blogs nowadays, but I’ve also written a lot of short stories, poetry, one novella, and been published quite widely in the UK Indie Press in the past.  It all started when I was writing something just for fun and several people told me that it was good so I should try to get published.


2) You're a self-published author as we've seen at your web page.  What made you decide to go the self-publishing route?
A few reasons really – I wasn’t really in the mood to start sending out manuscripts to companies, pay a fortune in postage, then wait for weeks for a reply!  It also lets me keep complete artistic control over the end product, and much of my work is in quite a small niche – if you write comedy science fiction and your name isn’t Douglas Adams (may his warped sense of humour be long remembered) or Rob Grant, you’ve got a pretty tough uphill struggle right from the start.  It might have helped if I’d got a novel or two to promote, but to date I’ve never been able to keep concentration on a single project long enough to produce a novel – short stories are so much more fun to write!
 
3) Tell us about your self-published works.
I have three books (and a preview) out at the moment.  The first one, “Space Oddity”, is pretty much my flagship release – it features all the stories about my sci-fi character “Captain Disaster” plus several other sci-fi or comedy stories.  It’s a mish-mash of what I consider some of my funniest stories along with the best serious sci-fi I’ve done.  Then there’s “Warts & All”, a poetry collection featuring comic verse, serious and prose poetry, and of course love poetry.  I must have been in a real mess back then because I’ve been too emotionally stable to write poetry for years!
 
“Lord of the Things Book I – The Mellow Hip of the Thing” is my parody of The Fellowship of the Ring – I plan to do The Two Towers and The Return of the King parodies later on.  Someone actually does have a copy of this for review, but they haven’t got round to writing it yet – I’m hoping they’ve maybe been laughing too much to write.  This actually started out as a community story written on Epinions, but I’ve taken out all the private references and greatly expanded the storyline.  I wrote this partly because I read “Bored of the Rings” by National Lampoon and thought that it really could have been much better.  Book II when I finally release it will be called “The Glue Flowers”.
 
Finally “The Snob, the Mob and the Blob” is intended to be a novella based on an existing short story I’d written years back.  It’s based around a virtual reality model who ends up being a bit too real for comfort.  Admittedly this isn’t a completely new concept so I’ve tried to avoid the normal clichés... but I really need to finish it, of course (and the hard drive containing the work packed up a long time ago, so not quite sure how I’m going to do that...)


4) OK, let's find out how you did it.  Give us an outline of how you got these books into reality - what resources you used, what websites, etc.
I looked at a few options, dismissing some as merely being vanity publishing, and tried Lulu.com since it seemed to genuinely be a self-publishing resource.  I had actually put together some books years ago, printing and binding them myself, but I didn’t really want the agro of doing that again and to be honest providing payment options and handling postage myself was a bit of a pain as well.  Lulu sorts all of that out for you, and in my experience do it pretty well.
 
The basic process you have to go through it creating the text and formatting it how you want it – did that in Word – and importing it into Lulu.  You choose the print type (mono, colour covers or colour in the whole book), the binding type (ring-bound, perfect-bound), and set the price including your commission.  Lulu don’t take a commission until you do, then taking 20% of what you get.  Theoretically they don’t make a profit for the actual printing and binding, though I’m sure they do pretty well out of that in reality.  You can also create ebooks etc, you’re not limited simply to bound books.
 
Finally you create (or import) the front and back covers, choose various options depending on whether you’re purchased an additional promotional bundle from Lulu, order a proof copy (at print cost) and, once you’re happy with that, you’re ready to go.
 
5) Did anyone help you with this?
Nope.  I did it (altogether now) my way.


6) What were the challenges of self-publishing?  How did you overcome them?
The first time I used Lulu it wasn’t long before I got fed up of their technical limitations.  Their software initially simply wasn’t up to the job, and it wasn’t long before I cancelled my account there and left in a fit of pique.  However a couple of years later I went back to them (having looked at the opposition and been rather underwhelmed, and still having a desire to publish my books), and I found that things had much improved.
 
Though it’s a bit time-consuming and obviously involves a bit of cost (getting one or possibly more proof copies), and the delays can be frustrating, it’s not the actual creation and publishing aspect of self-publishing that’s the main challenge; it’s the marketing.  Without spending a certain amount of money or a huge amount of time, chances are you’re not going to get many sales.  I’m very pleased with the finished product of my books, but sales are not exactly in the millions (or hundreds... or tens!).  You really have to be committed to making it work and be willing to pay out some money if you want to see anything much come back, even if you’ve chosen the completely free publishing option.  It helps if you have a really strong and focused niche area and an existing following of readers, of course... pity really that I didn’t! Also, non-fiction seems to do better than fiction, from what I’ve seen.
 

7) What were the advantages of self-publishing?
It’s nice to be able to keep control of everything, and not having to write for a particular audience in order to get published – no-one can say to you “that story isn’t right for this publication”.  It also depends what you want it for – some people self-publish a book of poems or a local history book purely for personal fulfilment and maybe for a few friends and family – things that would never be taken up by a commercial publishing house get into print and bring some people more happiness than any bestseller – and who’s to say that a book about the history of the local high street doesn’t have a place in this world?
 

8) Many people worry they can't self-publish - they can't get an ISBN, they need a lawyer, etc.  What incorrect assumptions do you see people make about self-publishing and why?
People think it’s a lot harder than it actually is, and unless you’re actually stealing someone else’s material or slandering someone, there shouldn’t be any reason to worry about legal matters.  I did look into the laws governing parodying existing literature before I published Lord of the Things – like so many other things it’s a bit of a grey area but seemed okay – if the Tolkein Estate ask me to take LoTT off-sale, I will do!
 
With Lulu, you can select a package to get an ISBN automatically – this isn’t something you’d need to do even if you wanted to sell it, but they were offering the package free along with listing on Amazon when I was about to publish, so I took it up (I think it would have cost £75 ordinarily).  Again much of it depends what you’re actually self-publishing for.
 
Probably the most common wrong assumption people make though is that all self-published work is distributed that way because it’s rubbish and no publisher would be mad enough to take it on.  Sure it’s true in some cases, but there is definitely a large quantity of very high quality literature out there in the self-published world.  Don’t forget, Dickens started off that way, and he did pretty well for himself...
 
9) Any final closing advice for our readers?
If you like the idea of self-publishing, go for it – and even if you have problems, there are many forums on the internet where people will be more than happy to help you.  If you approach it with the idea of making money out of it though, be prepared to spend a lot of time (and potentially money) advertising it.  If you did have in mind publishing a book that you hope to profit from, invest the time building up a website where you can advertise it, build up hype and hopefully get a group of people who’re interested in the project.
 
Finally, before you decide to self-publish, be sure that you actually know what you want to get out of it, and be realistic – your book may be a modern masterpiece, but it still won’t be successful if no-one reads it.  To some people just having the book is success, for others it’s just the start.
 
 
 
Links:
CaptainD’s Lulu Storefront:         http://stores.lulu.com/darscom
Lord of the Things Book I:             http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/lord-of-the-things-book-i---the-mellow-hip-of-the-thing/3724051
Warts & All:                                        http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/warts-all---paperback-edition/682276
Space Oddity:                                    http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/space-oddity/603567
CaptainD’s Review of Lulu.com  http://www.epinions.com/content_170719022724
 

Thanks to David!

- Steven Savage