The reason I began these blogposts years ago was to give readers an understanding and appreciation for the craft of writing—the creative process—and the business of writing with its myriad idiosyncrasies and disfunctions.

I haven’t contributed any blogposts recently because of one such dysfunction: the instability of the publishing business. My latest publisher, Southern Fried Karma (SFK) Press, closed its doors this summer. I went to SFK after my first publisher stopped paying the royalties they owed me, and now this. Publishing others’ books is a tough way to make a buck.

Thus, I spent the last three months getting my rights back, having all my books removed from Amazon and the worldwide book distributor Ingram, getting updated covers and new interior layouts created, and uploading everything again as self-published editions using the Soul Source Press name that my wife, author Kim Conrey, and I launched earlier this year. Quite the marathon just to be able to sell the same books again, but at least all the money now comes to us.

The experience has forced me to reflect on issues of trust and loyalty, inertia and motivation. Both publishers I’d worked with were eager to get my books on the market and start racking up sales, but neither had been timely in their payments. This was a red flag I chose to ignore because I liked both the guys who founded their presses. I hung out with them, met and worked with their families—in both cases, several family members had roles in the business—and helped them recruit other clients by referring writers I knew. When royalty payments started to arrive later and later, and often only after nudging from me, I excused their tardiness because I understood how hard it was to run a small business. Whenever I had a new book completed, I considered going elsewhere, but there was that issue of loyalty. “Stay true, have faith, and everything will work out”: it looks good embroidered on a throw pillow, but such a philosophy often burns us in business dealings. “Fool me twice, shame on me” is more appropriate. Though it looks a little cynical on that hypothetical pillow.

My excuse for not going elsewhere was being extraordinarily busy in every other aspect of my life, and it was just easier to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results—we all know how that story ends. With my first publisher, it took them ceasing to respond to my nudges about past-due royalties to motivate me to threaten to sue them for breach of contract and demand my rights back. They ended up paying me with warehoused copies of my books. With SFK, the publisher decided to close his doors because I was the only author making him money, and the thrill was gone. So now I’m a purely self-published author.

Some advantages of self-publishing also involve trust, loyalty, and motivation. I don’t need to trust and be loyal to anyone but myself and my readers—there’s no one to string me along or lead me astray. Staying motivated is easy because I can see the results of my advertising efforts every day—versus when I was traditionally published, where the publisher had that information, not me (and did precious little to get the word out, even though they had the motivation to act). Inertia means no sales, so it’s an easy formula.

For readers, the upshot of all this is you can be assured that any purchases going forward will be supporting the creator of the work rather than an anonymous publisher who might or might not be sending royalties. I promise you that I’ll focus even more on producing quality reading experiences. Currently, I have four projects I want to complete, ranging from historical fiction to a contemporary Southern novel I’m cowriting with Kim.

It’s just another chapter in a grand adventure. We’ll see what happens next together!