The exact request was: Anything on your experiences as a self-publishing author.
That leaves me a lot of scope and I've talked about several things before, so I've tried to come up with something new.
When I first set out to be a self-pub I tried to compartmentalise my author identity for the different genres I write. I had one for the books I write with Soph, one for the adult tiles and one for the YA/NA books. I think this was a huge mistake.
I can understand why some people would want to compartmentalise, but for me, it just didn't work. The whole situation just over complicated things. I have since gone 'screw it' and just advertise everything everywhere. I always make sure that my books with adult content are marked as such so I don't think there should be any confusion. I still use a nom de plume for my adult books because it makes it easier to distinguish them, but it's not exactly much different from my real name and I throw links to all my books at all my places on the web.
For reference, my books that have Tasha D-Drake on the front are my adult titles (and by that I mean they have explicit sex) and all those with Natasha Duncan-Drake are for a more general audience.
I decided a long time ago on a simple rule: never put anything out there I would be ashamed to stand up and admit was mine. It's something I try to live by in general and I feel the same way about my books.
I compartmentalised my different books to begin with because I thought that's what you did and I know some people are very successful that way, but it didn't work for me. The reading public has a brain and I like to credit them with being able to use it, so I suspect they can tell the genres of my books quite easily. I'm not saying this will work for everyone, or that it should, but it does for me. This entry was originally posted at http://beren-writes.dreamwidth.org/269909.html.
