Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Jason White's indie adventure

I met Jason on Goodreads last fall soon after publishing Malice. So when I discovered he'd joined the indie ranks with the release of his first short story collection, I asked him to come by and talk a bit about his journey.  

How Room 118: 3 Stories Came to be.

I’m not much of a people person. They’re unpredictable, often unnecessarily mean and grumpy. But the crazy ones are a different breed altogether, and getting stuck working with one can be just downright scary. It’s because of this that they can also make interesting topics for stories.

When I was putting Room 118 together, I didn’t intend for there to be a running theme throughout the three stories. I simply grouped stories that I thought would work well together. I have to admit that I’m ashamed that I didn’t see it before.

Of all the stories I’ve written, these three are among my favorite. I have two more eBooks, with three stories in each, which I’m planning to release hopefully within a month. When I have all nine published, I will then publish all in one singe collection, in physical form through CreateSpace.

To do this, I hired an artist for the physical book, and I highly recommend him. His name is Ronnell Porter. I created the covers for the trinity of short story collections myself, available in eBook only. I also formatted Room 118 myself, and I’m considering hiring somebody else to do that for the next. I found working with all that html fun, but it is also very time consuming. Time that could be spent writing.

I hired Diana Cox to edit all nine stories, and I highly recommend that you do too. She is great to work with, and she is incredibly professional.

Since publishing Room 118, I’ve had little success in sales, but this has not deterred me at all. It’s been only out for a month, and the reviews have been good thus far.

Over all, self-publishing has become an adventure that’s terribly fun, with much less despair than I thought there would be. I can’t wait to get to work on the next. I also cannot wait until I have the physical copy of my collection, titled Isolation, in my hands, on my bookshelf. It’s a dream come true, really. 

Thanks for stopping by Jason, and I wish you the best of luck! 

Jason White lives in Central Ontario, Canada with his longtime girlfriend, their two cats and one dog. He has over fifteen short stories published in various magazines and anthologies. In his spare time, he enjoys watching horror movies, tasting beers and red wines, playing with his "pack," and reading, of course.

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