I have a different take on why writers go POD, and that’s because self publishing is the only way to get your stuff in print without going the former vanity house way where you paid someone to format your book and do a cover, and were expected, after that, to buy a couple thousand books. Never went that route and never would. But Amazon CreateSpace allows you to do all that for free as long as you do your own formatting. I started putting my novels on CreateSpace, doing my own formatting and covers, with no expectation of selling a single copy, but with the intent of buying enough copies to put into boxed sets to give to family, so that a future great-grandchild might come upon the dusty books one day and say, “Hey, isn’t that great-grampop?” and pick one out to read. Immortality of a sort.

When Wretchard suggested to me that I go on Facebook and expand my market, I did, a few days ago, and already have a few sales, which is entirely satisfying. It isn’t the royalty money, which is insignificant, it’s the fact that someone has looked you up on Amazon, opened the book and liked it well enough to buy it and read it. All a writer wants is for someone to read his stuff. That’s why he writes, or one of the reasons he writes. Most of us would write even if nobody ever read the stuff, though most of us dream, on occasion, of writing a best seller, knowing how truly improbable that is.

Walt Erickson