Why you give stuff away.

I've been asked by quite a few people in the last few days as to why I would want to give away the short story collection that I put out.  Why would you just hand your book out instead of having people pay?  Don't you worry that people might not buy it if they can get it for free?  I'm going to take a moment and explain my thoughts on Amazon KDP, on publishing, and how my thoughts ran when deciding what I wanted to do with a book of short stories.  

When I first started looking at options for getting published it seemed like there were two options in the world.  Self publishing and the standard publishing house method.  There seemed to be no discussion between the two and trying to listen to both sides left me feeling like I was in the middle of some epic tug-o-war between the two sides.  To me there seemed to be no real way to get your name out there until you were discovered and got a book deal.  It felt like the equivalent of finding a golden ticket in a candy bar, it could happen but it wasn't necessarily likely as they were rather rare.

So, taking this into consideration I looked at the options before me while I was parsing through my finished novel first drafts, finding all the character flaws, and planning new ones.  There came a point where I wanted to have something out there in the world so that I could say.

"Yes, I am a writer.  I have something available for you to read."  All the words in the world on your hard drive don't show proof to most people.  Most people write you off as a day dreamer.  You get told to focus on real things like your job, your schooling, and anything else.  Just not this writing thing, just not your dreams.  

There is nothing I hate more than to have a dream and have people doubt it.  My dream: to someday be able to find my book in a library.  To be recognized as someone that made a difference using my words on the page to someone.  So yes, I gave away over 130 copies of the book.  I didn't see a cent of profit from those.  But there are now 130 people in the world that hold in their hands proof of my dream.  There have been co-workers that told me that the stories that I wrote have touched them, made them sad, made them scared.  That in some way my words have connected to them and I can tell that they have begun to become supporters of me, of my dream.

In the future when I put something else out, when I get a book deal, when I am seeing more than just the conceptual drawing of my dream painted before me, these are the people that will be there.  Not everyone will be touched, not everyone will read more than one or two stories from the collection.  But there are a few which will become the beginning of my literary following.  There are a few that when those new projects see the light of day they'll be waiting to purchase a copy, or perhaps even pre-ordering it.

I know I might not break even on what I spent on the cover of the collection I put out.  I know that those 130 sales might be the biggest month this collection ever sees.  But I'm okay with that.  You have to start your foundation somewhere, you have to draw a line in the sand and see who is willing to step across it to help you in your dreams.  Perhaps I'll just have two, or four that will follow what I write and see me as the writer that I long to be.  But I will greet them with open arms, I will welcome them into my dream and let them help me build it.  Sometimes there are far more important things in life than money.  Because nothing can beat working towards your dream.