Ten Years of Independent Publishing. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

It was January 1, 2010, New Year’s Day, when I announced to Facebook and the world that I would be editing and publishing my first two novels.

And eyes proceeded to roll, eyebrows proceeded to crawl upwards, inward shudders were sternly repressed, and the more polite ones proceeded to ignore me as best they could.

Who can blame them? Ebooks had only been around two or three years. No one had any real idea of what an ebook aggregator was. Amazon was just beginning to make some pretty heavy waves. Borders, second largest chain of physical bookstores in the U.S. was dead or in the throes of death.

Of course they hated us—

They hated me, and I knew it. But that's okay, ladies and gentlemen.

That was okay with me.

The real bestsellers were fairly secure in their contempt, but the mid-list authors, the ones who were being dropped or in danger of being dropped due to indifferent sales, hated us.

That was ten years ago. No matter what one might think of my writing, editing and publishing skills ten years ago, the fact is, I have persisted.

Writing and publishing is one of the most speculative ventures that I have ever encountered, although there are no doubt others. Here’s the thing. A person can get a job as a plumber’s helper, some twenty year-old, and after a few months, everyone accepts that this is indeed a plumber.

Ten years later, some guy on Facebook, mentioning no names, reared his ugly head. I have no doubt he was just a troll. Something about his story, the one about winning a writing contest with his very first attempt, sounded fishy. Follow up on the name, there was literally nothing there—he had no books, no stories, nothing for sale on Amazon.

Why was he there? He was trolling authors, the basic premise was that only he was capable of determining who had the right to call themselves a writer. A writer is one who writes, surely a plain and sensible definition, but no. No, ladies and gentlemen. Only those who had won awards, those who had million-dollar advances and New York Times best-selling status had the right. The rest of us were all shit, and he knew it. I saw all those other budding authors, all the people with one or two books, many of them independently published, all of the poets, many of them being published ‘for the love’, which is to say no pay. And I saw their comments, most of them trying to explain, or to justify, why they had the right to call themselves writers.

Suffice it to say that I dropped the creep, and have no regrets about that. Hopefully some of the other ones smarten up as well. Take away his victims and his audience, that one has nothing—nothing, ladies and gentlemen, except perhaps one or more bogus names on Facebook and a bad attitude that ain’t going to cure itself.

In ten years, I have published twenty-two novels under five different pen-names. With paperbacks in two different sizes, with numerous novellas and short stories, I have at least one-hundred and fifty-four titles. Each title comes in a half a dozen formats. That's a lot of products.

The funny thing is, I have never introduced myself as a writer. But then, I suppose I have never introduced myself as anything other than what I am.

I’ve done every kind of shit job, on a thousand different job-sites. Just for starters—

I’ve been on disability for over twenty-five years. I have a part-time job making pizza dough, and I have spent over thirty years in learning how to write a story.

I’ve learned a lot in ten years of independent publishing, but then I have put in the time, made the effort, made the sacrifices, and done the experiments. I have taken a few hits, and thrown the odd punch along the way—but then, who wouldn’t.

Who wouldn’t.

If nothing else, I can tell you what doesn’t work, if only one was prepared to listen—most are not and that’s fair enough.

I have nothing but confidence in my ability as a writer.

And I would actually like to thank that person, whoever they may have been.

Thank you for reminding me of why I came here in the first place.

We will be celebrating our tenth anniversary here at Shalako Publishing and Long Cool One Books, and to hell with the likes of you, sir.

END


Editor's Note.  Louis forgot to mention that he's been published in six or seven languages, sold stories here and there for real, actual money and stuff, and, this is the part they really hate, he's given away approximately 150,000 ebooks over the last ten years.

And now you know the rest of the story.

Louis has all kinds of books and stories on Kobo.

Image: borrowed

Thank you for reading.