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Little Nani and Me – Why I Decided To Become an Indie Author
The dream of any writer is to be published. Ideally, every writer dreams of signing a wonderful contract with a big publisher, or at least with a publisher big enough as to make us well-known and to make us sell lots of books. As I said, that is ideally. There are lots of writers out there, and there are lots of very good writers out there. All of them deserve a big contract, because their books are amazing. Sadly, not many of them get that desired contract. That’s how the Indie community appeared. Not now, but long time ago.
I have always wanted to be a writer. I started writing when I was very young, and I even won a literary contest when I was 8 years old. I wrote a short story about the environment, I made it into the finals, and then I won: I got a collection of classic books and a desk. So my dream has always been to publish a book. Till August 2011 I didn’t know that it was possible to find an audience if you went self-published, but then I saw that lots of writers that I was meeting in Twitter were selling a huge amount of books. Hey! I also wanted to write a book and sell a lot of copies!
So Little Nani started to take shape in my head. I wrote a story, I published it in my blog, and people liked it. I felt good, so I wrote a second story, and people liked it even better. I was very happy, so I decided to write a collection of short stories with Little Nani as the main protagonist. Little Nani is a little girl who wants to be a witch. She meets a lot of friends, and she is always messing around with the wrong spells; but she is also sweet and willing to help others. Her adventures are very funny and I thought that my book could be directed to children.
Well, I sent some stories to several publishers. Just three replied to my email. Two of them told me they weren’t interested at the moment in publishing such a book, but the third one said they would be happy to publish my book, since the stories were funny and would easily find an audience. I trusted them. That was my mistake. We authors, sometimes, are too willing to have our books out there, and that makes of us naïve people sometimes. I was naïve, I fell for their flattery, and I got what I deserved for my naïvety.
After months of writing my stories, and weeks of waiting for a reply from my supposed “publishers”, I started to worry and I started to think that maybe the “agreement” I had signed was not the best of the ideas. After talking to some friends, we then discover that this supposed Publishing Agency was a fraud, and they were under investigation. I felt outraged, I felt stupid, and I promised to myself that I would have my book out there for everybody to read it even though no publisher were interested in my stories.
That is how I chose to become an Indie author. Thinking about it now, I should have done it from the very beginning, and I shouldn’t have fallen for the flattery and the suave speech of these deceptive people who only want to take your money and mess up with your dreams. But I guess that everybody learns lessons in this way, in the hard way. After months of suffering, not knowing what was going to happen to my book, now I am in full control, now I am getting it ready to publish it through Createspace, and now I feel absolutely happy about my book. I don’t care if I just sell one copy, or even if people don’t like it; at least, I will have fulfilled my dream of having published a book. And it will be even more satisfactory, since I self-published it. So my “The Funny Adventures of Little Nani” will be out and ready for selling very soon, hopefully at the end of the summer.
What do I want to say with all this rant? Well, if you really want to publish a book, if you really have faith in your writing, go self-published. Don’t wait for a professional publisher telling you that your writing is not worth of it. You don’t need them. You just have to believe in yourself. You will be surprised of how much other authors will help you, providing valuable pieces of advice, helping you to promote your book, even reading and reviewing your work. And eventually, maybe one day someone from a big publishing company reads your self-published work, loves it, and offers you a big contract. Who knows? But till that happens, you need to make your work known, and going Indie is the best option. The Indie Community of writers is like a big family. A family all over the world. And I love being part of that family.
Thanks, Rob, for letting me rant like this in your Indie Week 
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About the Author:
Cinta García de la Rosa is a Spanish teacher who always dreamt of being a writer. So she writes, every day, compulsively. Always active, she is also an avid reader, a blogger and a book reviewer. Her first writings were in Spanish, but, since she got her BA in English Studies, she decided to start writing in English. Now, she feels more comfortable writing in English than in her mother tongue. She is finishing the editing and formatting of her first book “The Funny Adventures of Little Nani”, a collection of stories for children, with illustrations and other surprises. She is also working in other projects: a collection of short stories and a novelette based on the British Regency period. Apart from writing and reading, she enjoys meeting new people, dancing, and traveling.”
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