A self-publishing adventure (with a Kindle Scout detour)

One of my favorite Stephen King stories is about Cujo. King “barely remembered writing Cujo at all” because he was on cocaine and cough syrup the whole time.

I wish I could accidentally write a bestseller while blacked out. And while the trajectories of my careers as a writer and a drug user are nowhere near King’s, they do have one similarity. Sort of.

I was digging around in my email and found a manuscript I didn’t remember writing.

It drew heavily from my MFA thesis in terms of plot and characters. But it was MUCH better than my thesis, which I’ve always been too embarrassed to show anyone other than my committee members. Judging by some of the details included, I must have written this draft around 2012? 

I have so many questions about the manuscript. Like, why did I decide to extensively revise my thesis? How long did it take? Why did I email it to myself and promptly forget about it? People tell me my memory is bad, but it’s not King-on-a-bender bad. The hardest drug I did in 2012 was hash.

Anyway, I decided to embark upon a SELF-PUBLISHING ADVENTURE and put this mystery manuscript, Acts of God and Other Damage, into the universe. While researching self-publication, I stumbled upon the Kindle Scout program.

The Kindle Scout program is often likened to American Idol for books. You throw your cover, blurb and novel excerpt up, users read it and if they like what they see, they nominate it for a contract from Kindle Press. It’s a pretty sweet contract: a $1,500 advance, 50 percent of royalties, five-year renewable terms and all the clout of the biggest publisher of ebooks in the world (which is way better than what I got when I published with a small press in 2015).

So I was like, wait, let me hold off on this SELF-PUBLISHING ADVENTURE and throw Acts of God and Other Damage up on this here platform. You’re more than welcome to nominate it for the contract (actually, please do), which requires two clicks.

If the book is selected by Kindle Press, you get a free copy, and if it doesn’t, email me and I’ll send it to you. I’m flattered that you want to read my stuff. In keeping with the high Stephen King motif, yes, there’s plenty of drug use in this book.