What do you do with your original writing?

[Jobee]

I've done a good amount of writing in the past year or two, and I might be able to finish some books if I keep up with it. But I have no idea what to do with the writing after I finish the story! Since Fanfiction exists on a strictly not for profit space, I've never had to figure out what to do with entirely original work. I want to share my stories with others who'd enjoy it, but I'm not entirely sure how. I live on Social Security Disability and I'm afraid if I publish something, I could lose my benefits. But if I just post it online freely, other people or AI could pick it up and publish it and profit off of it without my permission. I know we have a few authors in this dolly forum. What do you think I should do?

[DollyKim]

You can earn a certain amount on SSI, talk to someone who specializes in that, so on that end I'd suggest Lulu or Blurb for self publishing. I use it for my doll sewing books, I have a work of original fiction on there but it's mostly to act as a copyright protection because of who I was dealing with at the time.

Don't know what to say about online. I've thrown some fan fiction to the wind. For a couple of original pieces I uploaded the pdf to a domain I own and sent out links. I suppose you see if each page can go thru one of those filters artists use to stop generative AI. I recently uploaded a bunch of old band photos my sister took but slapped water marks of the band's name right in the middle of them to stop people from making unauthorized merch. It hasn't stopped the fans from sharing, which was my intent, but it ruins any printing chances.

[victoriavictrix]

You publish it on Amazon Kindle and "sell" it for either $0 or 99 cents.

[Jobee]

You publish it on Amazon Kindle and "sell" it for either $0 or 99 cents.

Oh! You can put books up there for free? I'd be down for that. I'd also like to offer it on Rakuten Kobo, since it's an alternative to Amazon. I didn't know I could make it free. That would be perfect. I just wanna share my stories, I don't care about turning a profit.

thank you to both of you who responded. If anyone else has experience with self publishing, I'd love for you to share it here, because I'm a total noob! lol

[Kattriella]

I'm bumping this because I'm also somewhat interested in this and want to be able to find it later.

[DollyKim]

I too shall ponder free on Kindle, or a substitute, as I'm unhappy about not being able to download my future kindle purchases.

Another way to thwart printing is to make something that looks good on screen but has a low resolution and would print like a potato.

[Tam I am]

I have mine up on Dreamwidth. IIRR you can tell it to nope AI.

[victoriavictrix]

[quote="DollyKim"]I too shall ponder free on Kindle, or a substitute, as I'm unhappy about not being able to download my future kindle purchases.

/quote]

If I understand the update correctly, you can continue to download kindle purchases to a Kindle device, like a Fire. You just can't download to a PC or tablet. Unsure on if you can download to a phone.

[Jobee]

I too shall ponder free on Kindle, or a substitute, as I'm unhappy about not being able to download my future kindle purchases.

If I understand the update correctly, you can continue to download kindle purchases to a Kindle device, like a Fire. You just can't download to a PC or tablet. Unsure on if you can download to a phone.

Huh, my Kindle desktop app still works. I use SumatraPDF for everything else.

[DollyKim]

They don't want to know what I'll do to not have to buy another Kindle. I have too many things on pdf that another brand of tablet handles better. And it was #$@! just to try and sync the thing with my OS. Aside from two titles I couldn't get to download I dealt with my purchases. You're gonna have to really hit me in the special interests or blorbos now to ever get me to buy another title.

It was enough to make me think about my Audible books too. With all I have going on it takes me awhile to get thru some of them, I only have 4, but I did buy a CD of the most important one (the only one I could) and I have back up of another.

So, is your book al text or will it have pictures? What is it about?