I was interviewed this first week by LiloQui, a digital publishing company. It was my first author interview and I was very excited. I felt that it authenticated me. It was officially my name with the word "author" attached as if somehow I wasn't an author before. There have been other times when I felt that small sense of excitement like when I saw my name on my website then my business card, then my first digital short story. It is probably pale in comparison to when I finally publish my first full length novel.

The interview did make me realize something, however. I realized that I am still second guessing myself and my skills. For several days after the interview, I questioned every single word that I said. I was afraid that the interview would make me look unexperienced. I was afraid that I would not look good enough in comparison to other author's highlighted on the site. It is the same issue that has plagued me for years and kept from putting my work out there. It is the same issue that keeps me from finishing a piece because I am in a constant state of rewrite.

It is no secret that I, like millions of others in the world, am afraid of failure. Even though I logically understand that all published authors go through hundreds of rejections before someone accepts their work, it does not diminish the expected pain of hearing someone say, "you're not good enough". When you pour your heart and soul into something, you want others to see your worth.

That is one advantage of digital publishing. It opens the world to many new authors who have yet found their audience. It allows authors, like myself, who lack confidence to test the waters and improve their skills before tackling traditional publishing with its tiny window of acceptance. Having a stranger read my work and comment about how it moved them was the highlight of my day. Digital publishing has also allowed me to read a lot more work of others than I was previously able. Not only that, if trends continue, digital publishing will out run circles around traditional print publishers in a matter of years.

Don't get me wrong, digital publishing has its drawbacks as well. There are people who are publishing digitally that have no business publishing anything. Anyone can put anything up on Smashwords, for instance, and I ghost wrote a book for a gentleman a few years back using his content that was the worst book I had ever seen. I begged the man to reconsider what he was writing, but he was only interested in me correcting his spelling and sentence structure. It is cases like this that give self-publishing a bad name. Fortunately for us, that man's book never sold and he pulled it from the market.

So I will keep writing and working on my confidence. I will try multiple formats. I will try multiple styles. I will continue trying to build my network and leave my thumb print on the world--not so much to make a name for myself, but to say, "Hey! There is someone like you, and I have a story to share."



http://blog.liloqui.com/post/5638651284/author-spotlight-rachel-kovacs