WORDS WITH MR. KAUMANS- KEVIN KAUMANS
When you think of self-published books, you usually think of them in a negative way. This is usually due to the fact that they’re infamous for having bad grammar, cringy cover designs, and one-dimensional characters. This is usually because self-published authors are first-timers, who have little to no experience with writing.
Because of all these factors, most writers are often ashamed to self-publish due to the stigma behind it.
What makes this even more tragic is that I’m sure there are young writers out in the world with genuine talent that can’t get any literary agent to even look at their work due to their lack of experience.
This isn’t helped by the fact many people don’t consider self-published books “real books”, which only helps further the negative stereotypes of works that aren’t published traditionally.
Now to be fair, there’re a lot of works that have ugly covers, boring characters, and sentences that need to be spell checked self-published by writers that couldn’t be bothered to go over their own book at least once.
How do I know all this? Well, I myself am an author who published his first book through Kindle Direct Publishing on Amazon, and like all beginners, the grammar and cover wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be.
Now, I’m trying to publish my book through an actual publishing company in the hopes I can not only sell more copies but also have an editor help me with some of my mistakes. If you read the first article I wrote for Northwestern News, then you already know about the example I gave of my very first drift and how horrendous the writing was.
But despite all this, I recommend anyone reading this essay to give self-published books a chance. I’ve come across a few that weren’t horribly written. Just because a book wasn’t published by Scholastics or Harper Collins doesn’t mean they aren’t the next J.R.R. Tolkien or Agatha Christie.
My name is Kevin A. Kaumans, thank you for tuning into this week’s column.
Make sure to pick up a new newspaper from Northwestern News every week, and until next time friends:
Stay Educated
