Self Published and the Apathetic

I always view people who self publish their work in two lights:

1) People who are capitalistic in nature and enjoy being able to control their own products.

2) Lazy folk who don't stand a chance when it comes to actually getting something published, so they chose what many would consider is the easiest way out.

Thankfully we do not live in a black and white world, at least not all of the time. So while I believe those two archetypes exist, I am also aware there is a huge area in between both and certainly in another realm of understanding as well. I, unfortunately, would fit in the latter.

To put it as simply as I can without repeating myself a million times over: I write because I enjoy the process of sitting down and creating a story. I do not do it for money or for some absurd idea of celebrity. So while I do hope to one day be published, I don't mind not being published either. The only problem is that I am unemployed and have a history marred by personal idiocy, making my ability to find a job a slight bit harder. In an effort to take personal responsibility for my actions I have decided to try and publish more of my work, all the while going out each and every day and looking for a job.

Well, last summer I wrote a novel on a dare... I seem to do that a lot, actually. I ended up writing over a hundred thousand words (at the time it was closer to 130k, but I edited it down by about 24k). I never sought to publish this novel because... well, I just never really wanted to, actually. Recently, however, I decided to throw apathy to the wind and self publish it via Amazon.com. Yes, yes, I am that lazy.

I put up a decently detailed description of the novel and everything else you might want to know about why I am doing such a stupid thing on my blog. I would love to go into a long diatribe about what the story is about and why you, whoever you are, should buy it immediately. Instead, I'll leave you with a very brief summary: the story is about a government worker who is investigating the disappearance of two other government workers after a massacre caused by religious zealots.

Remember, this is science fiction, but it's also coming from me, somebody who avoids science fiction. I tried my hardest to make it more of a psychological story, but with a background of science fiction. I would link over to the book on Amazon (it's called Sero) but I can't help but think it's better if you read the blog post I put up. The book itself is an ebook (the whole kindle thing) so I tried to price it as low as I could - $1.99. I cannot justify selling it for a higher price and even the $1.99 seems high. I was originally going for $1.42; forty-two being the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. Then again, I always thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe.

-Irish